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YANKEE INGENUITY 
IN THE WAR 







(c) Pre 



Publishing Co 



A YANKEE SEAPLANE OF THE TYPE THAT FIRST FLEW ACROSS THE 
ATLANTIC; THE NC-2 RISING FROM THE WATER 



YANKEE INGENUITY 
IN THE WAR 

By 
FRANK PARKER STOCKBRIDGE 



Fully Illustrated 
From Official Photographs 




HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
New York and London 






Yankee Ingenuity in the War 



Copyrignt 1920, by Harper & Brothers 

Printed in the United States of America 

Published April, 1920 



U\ ~5 1920 
©CI.A565855 



To 

The Memory of My Father 

WINFIELD SCOTT STOCKBRIDGE 

to whose own Yankee ingenuity and enthusiasm in 
the pursuit of knowledge of the natural sciences and 
in their application I owe my early inspiration and 
guidance toward the study and appreciation of 
Man's conquest of the forces of Nature 
I dedicate this book 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. The mobilization of science and industry ... i 

II. The Liberty motor 14 

III. The creation of the airplane industry .... 37 

IV. American military airplanes 61 

V. Aerial photography and airplane equipment . . 79 

VI. The chemical conquest of the air . . . . . . in 

VII. Potash, sulphuric acid, and dyestuffs 121 

VIII. Poison gas 133 

IX. A revolution in ship-building 155 

X. Some extraordinary ship-building feats .... 175 

XI. The "Eagle" boats 193 

XII. Some Yankee tricks in undersea warfare . . . 212 

XIII. The wonders of war wireless 234 

XIV. Cotton balloons and fire-proof dirigibles . . . 257 

XV. Motorizing the army 268 

XVI. Yankee weapons 290 

XVII. Camouflage and counter-camouflage 314 

XVIII. Dollar-saving discoveries and devices 331 

XIX. Medical and surgical achievements 344 

XX. Conclusion 370 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

A Yankee seaplane of the type that first flew across the 

ATLANTIC; THE NC-2 RISING FROM THE WATER . Frontispiece 

The Liberty motor 3 

A THREE-INCH gun in ACTION 5 

The American thirty-five-ton tank propelled by a Lib- 
erty MOTOR, BALANCED ON THE BRINK OF AN EMBANKMENT 7 

Working drawings of the Liberty motor, showing de- 
tails OF the internal construction of this wonder- 
ful engine 15 

The twelve-cylinder Liberty motor, Model B . . . . 17 
An end view of the Liberty Model A, the army type of 

motor 19 

Steel cylinders for Liberty motors 21 

Assembling the cylinders of Liberty motors 23 

Machining Liberty-motor cylinders 27 

The first Liberty motor turned out at the Ford plant 

being assembled for its final test 29 

Making the tide help 39 

How to cut a log without waste 41 

How to get all straight-grain stock 41 

Inside an airplane factory 43 

A Sitka spruce log 45 

Hauling spruce logs to the government airplane sawmill 47 

Riving a spruce log for airplane stock 49 

The kiln that made our airplane program possible . . 53 

Workers in a new art 55 

Covering an airplane's wings 57 

Putting on the "dope" 59 

America's largest overland flier 63 

America's standard fighting airplane 65 

The American Caproni night-bombing 'plane 67 

The fastest Yankee military 'plane 73 

The airplane of the "aces" 75 



xii ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



The "D" type seaplane 75 

America's first giant seaplane 77 

The first airplane to cross the Atlantic 77 

Airplane map of Washington, D. C 81 

Biggest of aerial cameras 85 

The automatic aerial camera 87 

how aerial photography aids the map-maker .... 89 

The Marlin aircraft machine-gun 93 

The gun that shoots both ways 95 

The Lewis aircraft machine-gun 97 

The Browning aircraft machine rifle . 99 

Shooting with photo-gun 101 

A strip of photograph made with the photo-gun, showing 

the operator had "got the drop" on the other 'plane ioi 
how an airplane looks when seen through the sights of 

a machine-gun io3 

the instrument board of a navy seaplane io9 

Painting the loaded gas-shells 135 

One of the poison-gas plants 137 

American, British, French, and German gas-masks . . 141 

Containers of poison gas ready to ship to France . . 143 

Loading gas-shells by automatic machinery 145 

General view of the Edgewood Arsenal near Baltimore 

where gas-shells were loaded 1 47 

a horse gas-mask i49 

The gun that beat the Hun 157 

The ship that was built in twenty- seven days . . . . 159 

The "Tuckahoe" on the twenty-seventh day . . . . 161 
View of the wooden ship "Aberdeen" taken forty- nine 

hours after the keel was laid, showing stern in 

PLACE I63 

The wooden ship "Aberdeen" 165 

Inside the hull of the "Aberdeen" 166 

A "close-up" of the air-gun 167 

The product of Hog Island 169 

The "Sagaponack" 169 

A record-breaking job and the men who did it . . . 171 
The men in the foreground are placing the reinforce- 
ments, WHILE IN THE BACKGROUND THE WOODEN MOLD 

is being finished for a 7,500-ton concrete ship . . 177 
Cutting a Lake ship in two preparatory to taking it to 

salt water 179 



ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 

PAGE 

Forward half of the "Charles R. Van Hise" turned on 
its side so the 10,000-ton lake ship could be floated 

through the Welland Canal 181^ 

Turning the after half of the " Charles R. Van Hise " 
on the side for towing through the Welland locks 

from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario 181 " 

Building a concrete ship is much like building a con- 
crete bridge 183 

Pouring the concrete into the mold and around the re- 
inforcements 183 

The "Palo Alto," first concrete ship of its size; it is of 

7, 500-DEAD- weight-ton capacity 185 

Launching the "Palo Alto," a 7,500-TON concrete ship, 

at Oakland, California 187 

One of the 3,000-TON concrete ships built at Brunswick, 

Georgia, by the Emergency Fleet Corporation . . 187 " 

Launching a concrete ship 189 ^ 

Women shipyard workers learning electro welding . . 191 

Launching an Eagle boat 195 

The keel and garboard strakes of an Eagle boat in place 197 

Hull of Eagle boat almost finished 199 

Where the Eagle boats were built 201 

Power plants of Eagle boats 201 

The rolling platform that carried the Eagle boats from 

factory to the launching elevator 203 

Nothing could be simpler than the method of building 

the Eagle boats 203 

Punching the plates for Eagle boats 205 

Hauling the Eagle boat out of the ship-factory . . . 207 
a squadron of eagle boats being fitted out .... 207 

"Going down" 209 - 

on the elevator 209 ' 

An Eagle boat in commission 210 

The American navy type of automatic depth submarine 

mine 213 

Diagram in outline with explanatory text showing how 
mines are "planted" at determined depths. plate 
ii, inserted, the "y-gun" for throwing depth bombs 

over side 215 

as the depth bomb explodes 217 

The "business end" of the submarine-detector . . . 219 
Listening for submarines 221 



xiv ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Raw material for the North Sea mine barrage . . . 229 

The navy wireless station at Arlington 235 

Pilot and observer in a military airplane with wireless 

telephone equipment 237 

Air-driven dynamo for wireless telephony 241 

Wireless telephone transmitter and head-piece . . . 243 

Perfected form of wireless head-piece for aviators . . 247 

All ready to let go 259 

An army observation balloon of the "sausage" type . 261 

a navy kite balloon 263 

The biggest Yankee dirigible 265 

Navy dirigible C-i 266 

One of the 14-iNCH American railway-mounted navy guns 

in action on the western front 269 

The "Liberty" truck, designed by army engineers . . 270 

The famous "F. W. D.," or four-wheel-drive truck . . 271 

Ten-ton caterpillar truck 271 

The Ford "baby tank" 273 

The American-built Renault tank 273 

Seven-inch gun on railway mount 275 

Twelve-inch 5o-caliber long-range gun on sliding rail- 
way MOUNT 275 

Caterpillar tractor drawing a 6-inch gun 277 

Light caterpillar tractor for hauling 3-inch gun . . 277 

Squadron of American Renault tanks going into action 279 

American tank in action 279 

Eight-inch gun on railway mount 281 

slxteen-inch howitzer railway mount shown in firing 

position at maximum angle of elevation 28 1 

An 8-inch howitzer on a caterpillar mount 283 

Twelve-inch mortar on railway mount 283 

A blacksmith-shop, forge, anvil, and all, and an electric 
welding outfit equip this unit of the rolling 

machine-shop 285 

a portable sawmill constitutes one unit of the machine- 
shop on wheels 285 

One of the units of the machine-shop on wheels; this 

trailer truck carries a drill-press and a power shaper 286 

The generator mounted on a trailer truck 287 

No machine-shop is complete without a stock-room for 

MATERIALS AND SPARE PARTS; THE MACHINE-SHOP ON 

WHEELS HAS THIS UNIT, TOO 287 



ILLUSTRATIONS xv 

PAGE 

Firing the twin gun 291- 

Springfield rifles 292 

Lewis machine-gun, model 1917 293 

The Colt double-action .45-CALiBER revolver .... 295 

The Colt .45-cALiBER automatic pistol 295 

Smith & Wesson double - action revolver, caliber .45, 

model 191 7 297 

Heavy Browning machine-gun 299 

Browning tank-gun mounted in tank 301 

The Davis gun that shoots both ways 303 

Browning automatic rifle 305 

Winchester 12-gage riot-gun 305 

The Livens projector 306 

"The weapon that won the war" 307 

Four types of hand-grenades 309 

The Yankee trench knife .311 

A triumph of Yankee ingenuity 312 

The most important Yankee improvement on the French 

"seventy-five" or 3-inch field-gun was the " split 

trail," permitting its elevation to fire at aircraft . 312 
Camouflaged Yankee ships at the Bassens Docks, 

Bordeaux 315 

The last word in marine camouflage 316 

A camouflaged ship 317 

Successive stages of ship camouflaging 318 

What the U-boat captain saw 319 

Painting the camouflage on the model boat 320 

A group of camouflaged boats ready for "service" . .321 

The boat as sighted through a periscope 323 

The airplane-detector 325 

The parabloid as perfected by American ingenuity . . 329 

Locomotives in boxes 333 

Unloading locomotives all ready to run 335 

Unloading crated airplanes in France 337 

Testing packing-boxes 339 

A five-ton motor-truck knocked down for shipment to 

France in a single box 341 

Roentgenographs or X-ray negatives of injured bones 345 

In an American army base hospital 347 

A field operating-room 349 

Portable electro-magnet 351 

Portable field X-ray equipment 353 



xvi ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Generator for portable X-ray equipment 355 

First page of the "Alpha" test 358 

Qualification Record 359 

Part of the "Beta" test 360 

Part of the "Beta" test is to tell what is wrong with 

pictures like these 361 

Test for radiator repair-man 362 

Sheet-metal worker demonstrating skill on simple work 

in his trade by making a tin cup 363 

a group of candidates for commissions taking the " alpha" 

TEST 365 

The "Binet" test for the men of lowest mental caliber 365 

auto-driver test course 366 

Running through an artificial sand-pit as part of the 

motorcycle test 366 

Many grown men were found without enough intel- 
ligence TO PUT THE ARMS AND LEGS ON A WOODEN DOLL 368 

Making the trade tests 368 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

In presenting this report of some of the more striking 
and inspiring examples of the technical achievements of 
America that went so far toward the winning of the Great 
War, the author wishes, first, to point out that the omission 
of any mention of the great scientific and engineering feats 
of the Entente Allies, except incidentally, is due not to 
any desire to disparage the magnificent work of those 
European masters of pure and applied science whose ser- 
vice in the cause of humanity was surely no less fruitful 
and even more arduous than that of their American 
confreres. But the whole scope and plan of this book, by 
its nature, excludes from present consideration all but 
distinctly American enterprise in this field. 

Even within this comparatively narrow range, there is 
no pretext that the whole field has been covered, or that 
what has been covered might not have been dealt with 
more in detail and with greater scientific precision. Event- 
ually that will be done; beyond a doubt the complete 
history of science in the war, yet to be written, will reveal 
a thousand wonders much more marvelous than any that 
have yet been set down. This volume, however, has not 
been written for the scientist or the technologist, but for 
the average American, neither skilled nor interested in 
technical details, but susceptible, the author believes, to 
the thrill of patriotic pride that comes from the recital of 
the story of a winning fight against heavy odds. 

Since the signing of the armistice there has developed 
a marked tendency among Americans to disparage our 
country's part in the war, to accept as true slanderous 
statements and inuendoes, set afloat by the country's 
enemies and those traitors of our own people who never 
really desired the defeat of the Central Powers, and repeated 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

and kept alive by the unthinking who love to roll juicy 
bits of gossip under their tongues. On every hand one 
hears it stated, and accepted as fact, that America's whole 
participation in the Great War was a huge failure; that 
our military and naval machine failed to function, and 
that our equipment, from airplanes to submarines, was 
worthless and insufficient. 

If this book shall prove in any slight degree an offset 
to such falsehoods and distortions of truth and a counter- 
blast to the calumniators of our country and our country- 
men's achievements, the author will feel amply repaid for 
the time and labor that have been expended upon its prep- 
aration. It has been a labor of love, in which he has felt 
the same patriotic pride that he hopes his work may inspire 
in every true American, and especially in those Americans 
of the future — the boys of to-day — to whom our country 
must look for the fulfilment of its great destiny in the re- 
shaping and rebuilding of the world. 

The author takes this occasion to express his thanks to 
the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the 
chairman of the Committee on Public Information and 
the members of its staff, all of whom, throughout the 
period of the war and afterward, so freely provided him 
with the keys and passwords that enabled him to penetrate 
behind the scenes, as it were, and see for himself what 
Yankee ingenuity was really accomplishing. He acknowl- 
edges his indebtedness, also, to the many officers of the 
army and navy who so fully and freely aided in every 
possible way in the collection both of information and of 
illustrations. He owes a word of appreciation, also, to the 
editors of Harper's Magazine, The World's Work, Popular 
Science Monthly, Motor Life, The New York Herald, The 
Sun, and The New York Times for courteous permission 
granted to include in this volume several chapters and 
parts of chapters which have previously appeared in the 
pages of their publications. 

Frank Parker Stockbridge. 

New York, March 3, 1920. 



YANKEE INGENUITY 
IN THE WAR 



YANKEE INGENUITY 
IN THE WAR 



THE MOBILIZATION OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY 

THE war that came to an end with the signing of 
the armistice on November n, 191 8, differed 
from all previous wars principally in that it was a 
contest of brains much more than it was a contest 
of brute force. Machines counted for more than 
men; minds for more than muscle; the only really 
doubtful question, after the first surprise shock had 
been successfully resisted by the Allies and the war 
settled down to a life-and-death struggle, was whether 
the technical resourcefulness of England, France, 
Italy, and America, and the ingenuity of the scientists 
and engineers of these countries, could match and 
overmatch the scientific and technical resources of 
the enemy. 

The beginning of the war marked the climax of an 
era of scientific research, discovery, and invention 
that had made the half -century that ended in August, 
1 9 14, the most marvelous chapter in the record of 
man's conquest of the forces of nature. It was the 
half -century that gave to the world the electric light, 



2 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the telephone, the bicycle, the automobile, the mo- 
tion picture, the phonograph, the X-ray, the wire- 
less telegraph, the airplane, and the submarine. 
And for forty or more of the fifty years Germany 
had been cunningly appropriating, adapting, and ex- 
ploiting these and a thousand other inventions and 
discoveries, the fruits of the research of the world's 
greatest intellects, until she had convinced herself 
and had all but persuaded the rest of the world that 
she, and she alone, held the master-key that would 
unlock the treasure-house of science and render its 
riches available for the service of mankind. So 
steeped were the Germans in their own conceit that 
they believed no material resources competent to cope 
with theirs could be marshaled against them; theirs 
was the last word in mechanics, in chemistry, in 
engineering; of what they did not have the rest of 
the world must be in ignorance. 

It is a source of tremendous satisfaction to be able 
to record the completeness with which Germany's 
vaunted leadership in the world of science and inven- 
tion has been overthrown, shattered, and demolished. 
What literally and actually happened was that Ger- 
many was crushed and broken by means of scientific 
discoveries and inventions so far superior to her own 
that she could not cope with nor resist them. Ger- 
many had for forty years been marshaling her technical 
resources for the conquest of the world; what Ger- 
many did not realize was that, instead of being ex- 
hausted, the technical resources of the rest of the 
world were practically inexhaustible and needed only 
the stimulus of necessity to be called into action, 
with overwhelming consequences to those who first 
provoked the war. 

The war was won, in fact, by Yankee ingenuity in 



4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the application of scientific knowledge and technical 
skill to military and naval ends. From the very 
beginning of the struggle in 19 14, nearly three years 
before the United States became a belligerent, the 
Allies relied upon America for their entire supply of 
many kinds of munitions of war and for a large pro- 
portion of almost all of their essential weapons. 
When America came into the war our government 
mobilized, not only an army of fighting-men, but a 
scientific, technical, and industrial army the like of 
which had never before been assembled. 

We had everything that Germany had and one 
thing that Germany did not have, the organizing and 
directing genius of American manufacturers, which 
had found its highest expressions in peace times in 
the method of making standardized articles of high 
quality in huge volume and at low cost, the peculiarly 
American method known as "quantity production." 

When America finally entered the war and threw 
its gigantic resources into the scale the seat of war 
shifted from the Hindenburg line to the factories of 
Bridgeport, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, 
and a thousand other American cities. The war be- 
came a contest of machine power as much as of man 
power. It was not only a question whether the Allies 
could hold Verdun, but whether Squantum could build 
destroyers faster than Hamburg could turn out sub- 
marines, Bridgeport produce more cartridges in a 
given time than Koln. The outcome of the war was 
the direct result of American quantity production 
applied to the manufacture of munitions. 

Quantity production is the manufacturing method 
that educates the tool as well as the mechanic and 
puts the power of a thousand horses and the skill 
of a thousand brains at the command of a single pair 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 5 

of hands. We have all seen the result ; I have tried 
to tell in these pages something about many of the 
more interesting and spectacular achievements in the 
way of quantity production, as well as to describe 
specific and particular inventions and applications of 
scientific knowledge that helped us to defeat Germany. 
But even such an impressionistic picture, painted, as 




A THREE-INCH GUN IN ACTION 

So rapidly did Yankee artillerymen learn to shoot the three-inch gun that the 

discharged shell did not reach the ground before the next charge was ready to fire. 

"Let me see your three-inch machine-guns," a captured German requested. He 

could not believe they were single-shot guns. 



it must necessarily be within the limits of a single 

volume, in the broadest of brush strokes, cannot 

convey an adequate sense of how big the job we did 

really was, how terrific the strain of the battle against 

time, without at least a peep behind the scenes, as it 

were. 
2 



6 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

I went to Detroit in the summer of 1918 to see for 
myself how American manufacturers were conducting 
their part of the war. I chose Detroit rather than 
Bridgeport or Cleveland or Chicago because Detroit 
is the foremost exponent in its industries of quantity 
production. I found Detroit performing mechanical 
miracles. One who could have looked unmoved upon 
the marvels of creative achievement then already in 
being must have been lacking in imagination or 
sensibility, or both. 

Probably the business men of Detroit would re- 
sent the imputation if one were> to call them poets, 
but if the essence of poetry be the power to con- 
ceive grandly and to express grand concepts with 
rhythmical force, no other term fits them. There 
was no escaping the sense of titanic fancy, ex- 
pressing itself in Homeric measures, in the face of 
what I found these business men doing. Dollars 
do not drive men to such heights of accomplishment ; 
war, not business, was the source and mainspring of 
these vast projects and their still vaster execution. 
Detroit was not thinking or talking of profits. "It 
is not fashionable to make money out of war," one 
of her business leaders expressed it. Many expected 
to come out millions poorer than they went in, and 
were glad that it was so. 

Detroit's story could be duplicated in many cities. 
Wherever munitions were made men threw them- 
selves and their enterprises wholly and unhesitatingly 
into the war, placid pastures were changed overnight 
into clangorous cities. The things Detroit showed 
me I could have found, or their parallels, in Bridge- 
port or Newark or Dayton. They would have 
pointed the same moral, for everywhere the story 
was the same. Miracles were performed everywhere, 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



7 



but at terrific cost in money, in labor, in strain and 
effort to make up lost time. 
- Take, as an example, the case of the Dodge Brothers, 




THE AMERICAN THIRTY-FIVE-TON TANK PROPELLED BY A LIBERTY 
MOTOR, BALANCED ON THE BRINK OF AN EMBANKMENT 



merely because their experience and achievement are 
typical of what occurred everywhere. They have 
been building automobile engines for years, cars com- 



8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

plete for some years. Their big organization is 
geared to quantity production in all that that implies. 
When we went to war they went to Washington and 
offered themselves and their organization. "We can 
make anything," they said. "What do you need?" 

Washington didn't know what it needed that the 
Dodge Brothers could make. It was autumn before 
they were sent for. 

' ' Can you make recoil mechanisms for one-hundred- 
and-fifty-five-millimeter howitzers?" the War Depart- 
ment asked. 

' ' Yes, ' ' said the Dodge Brothers. ' ' What are they ?" 

"They are something like this," replied the War 
Department, showing them a French piece, "only 
we've improved them. Here are our drawings. You 
work from these. Give us so many thousand by such 
a date." 

They did not wait to ask questions, but hurried 
back to Detroit to evolve a plant out of nothing, to 
create designs for machines and build them. 

That was on November i, 191 7. In early June, 
1 9 1 8, I went through their ordnance plant and saw 
them turning out the first of the finished pieces. Let 
me try to convey a faint impression of the miracle 
the Dodge Brothers had worked in the intervening 
seven months. 

First you must realize that the recoil mechanism 
of a modern field-gun or howitzer is not only one of 
the most ingenious devices ever conceived in the 
mind of man, but it must be more accurately fashioned 
to precise dimensions than any other object of its 
size and weight. To make one you take a ton and 
a half of steel in a single billet eight feet long. Length- 
wise of this you bore four holes from about three to 
more than four inches in diameter; two run all the 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR o 

way through, two half-way. Then you shape the 
outside of the billet, carving it down at some places 
to a thin wall around the holes, leaving it in a rigid 
mass at other points. You hew out of its side a 
recess the size of a soap-box. You fashion grooves 
and lands, channels and projections, on various sur- 
faces. By this time you have six hundred pounds of 
metal left; the rest has gone into the scrap-heap. 
Now you must finish this, grind it smooth, polish it 
inside and out, and when it is all done every dimension 
must register to within one two-thousandth of an 
inch; the bore and the line of the eight-foot holes, 
the angles of the recess, the thickness of the walls, 
must be accurate to the infinitesimal fraction of a 
hair! 

The Dodge Brothers owned a vacant piece of 
pasture-land on the outskirts of Detroit; and there 
they decided to erect their plant. They could only 
guess at the size, for they couldn't tell offhand how 
many or how large the machines and tools would 
have to be and there was not a second to lose. It is 
a saying in Detroit that they have but three seasons — ■ 
July, August, and winter. Unless the building could 
be put up before the heaviest frosts it must wait till 
spring — and our army needed six-inch guns. So the 
Dodge Brothers staked out twelve acres and on 
November 19th began to lay a foot of concrete over 
the whole of it; they couldn't get a contractor to 
accept the job. With the thermometer most of the 
time many degrees below zero, there was finished 
in four months a huge building, 850 by 600 feet, 
steel-framed, brick-walled, concrete-roofed; roads 
were graded and trolley lines extended, a new electric- 
power substation built — a million dollars or so of the 
Dodge Brothers' own money spent merely for the 



io YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

housing of a plant that so far existed only in the mind's 
eye, for a factory building is not yet a manufacturing 
plant. 

Machinery was scarce and hard to get. One officer 
of the company spent three months and five and a 
half million dollars buying machinery and getting it 
moved toward the new plant. To bore the four holes 
in one operation a machine had to be devised. Me- 
chanical engineers and draftsmen worked it out, 
and seventy-two machines were built — huge devices 
costing many thousands each. Nobody stopped to 
estimate cost; speed was what counted. Then came 
the most delicate and difficult work of all, the design- 
ing and making of the tools, the actual cutting- 
heads for fashioning the steel into shape. All the 
machinery does is to serve as the mechanical hands 
to hold and operate the cutting-tools. Every tool 
must be drafted to the exact size and shape of the cut 
to be made in the steel, then fashioned from high- 
speed steel by the highest paid and most skilful 
mechanics, the toolmakers. I saw a milling-machine 
cutting-head in operation that cost nearly one thou- 
sand dollars in labor alone, and there were dozens 
exactly like it. This tool performs only one of the 
forty or fifty operations necessary to fashion the rough 
billet into the recoil-mechanism bed. 

Have I made it clear what quantity production 
involves in money, time, brains, and labor before a 
single finished article can be turned out? It took 
seven months and seven million dollars before the 
first recoil mechanism could be delivered. Yet its 
manufacture involved no new principles, no methods 
with which Detroit (and I include all American 
manufacturers) had not been perfectly familiar for 
years . 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR n 

What the Dodge Brothers did hundreds, possibly 
thousands, of other American manufacturers did in 
as- many other items of the vast number of things that 
had to be made to carry out our war program and 
equip our fighting forces. 

Through this sort of co-operation, there has come 
about a better understanding between the govern- 
ment at Washington and the business men of the 
nation. Washington has a clearer comprehension of 
the difficulties and the problems of the business man, 
and the business men of the country have acquired 
new knowledge and respect for Washington's point of 
view and ways of doing things, and for the men of 
science who played so important a part in our war 
preparations. In a hundred different fields of applied 
science, business men who had spent their lives in 
particular lines of industry found, when they under- 
took to do war work for the government, that the 
methods they had found good enough for business 
purposes were not good enough for government pur- 
poses, but had to be adapted, refined, and improved 
to meet specifications drawn up by the scientific ex- 
perts from the universities and research laboratories, 
who had been called into the service of the nation, 
put into uniforms, and given the opportunity to make 
practical application, in uncounted instances for the 
first time, of the principles which their research and 
experiments had demonstrated to be in advance of 
current knowledge in the trade. 

At first the theories of the business man and the 
facts of the scientists, who are seldom concerned with 
theories, but who do insist upon facts, frequently 
clashed. The scientists were in uniform, however, 
with bars and oak leaves and eagles on their shoul- 
ders, and when they gave orders they had to be obeyed. 



12 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

And before very long a good many thousands of 
"practical" men began to discover that a lot of the 
things they had always done had been done very 
badly indeed; that a lot of things they had always 
maintained couldn't be done could be done, and were 
better than the old ways. They began to have a new 
respect for the men whom they had f ormerly addressed 
somewhat contemptuously as "professor," but whom 
\_they now saluted as "captain"! 

The whole wonder-story of our country's scientific 
and technical war achievements may never be told; 
fragments of it will continue to be told, piecemeal, 
for a generation to come. In the perspective of his- 
tory these things that American industry, inventive- 
ness, and ingenuity accomplished in the brief space 
of eighteen months will rank with our most glorious 
achievements by land and sea; they were no less 
essential to the winning of the war and hardly less 
heroic. The full disclosure of these things, many of 
them among the most carefully guarded military and 
naval secrets while hostilities were in progress, will 
furnish also the final convincing, clinching proof that 
German claims to scientific and technical leadership 
are based on nothing but egotism and moonshine. 

Enough can now be told to make it clear that we 
have taken forward steps in the application of science 
to the uses of humanity, forced by the pressure of 
war necessity, that might not have been taken in 
fifty or a hundred years of the slow and orderly 
processes of peaceful development. We cannot meas- 
ure the cost of the war in dollars and cents alone, 
but, on the other hand, its profits, great as they are 
in their spiritual values, have material aspects in the 
new tools and instruments which have been put in the 
hands of man a generation or two earlier than they 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 13 

otherwise might have been available for his use; the 
methods and processes by means of which life may 
be made easier and better, even though these methods 
and processes were devised under the stress of con- 
flict to make the taking of life easier and swifter; the 
new knowledge of ourselves and our resources, our 
possibilities and our limitations, too costly to seek 
out in time of peace, but which, once disclosed by 
the emergency of war, is of imperishable and incal- 
culable value in rendering easier and more swift the 
progress of the race toward the goal of the ulti- 
mate absolute liberation from every form of bondage, 
physical as well as spiritual, of every human being. 



II 

THE LIBERTY MOTOR 

BEYOND question America's biggest single war 
achievement in the application of scientific knowl- 
edge and technical resources and methods is the 
development and production of the Liberty motor. 
In spite of all that has been written and said about 
this wonderful engine, it is probable that the full 
extent and importance of what was accomplished in 
its production can never be grasped except by the 
technical men who took part in the work. Let me 
try to visualize what this war production meant. 

On the day the armistice was signed there had 
been built and delivered 15,131 twelve-cylinder Lib- 
erty motors. The total horse-power developed at 
Niagara Falls is about one million. These Liberty 
motors had the power of six Niagaras — -6,052,400 
horse-power ! 

Engine production at this speed, unprecedented as 
it was, was not fast enough. Not only our own Air 
Service, but the aviation corps of Great Britain, 
France, and Italy were clamoring for Liberty motors, 
and when the armistice was signed orders had been 
placed for 51,100 Liberty twelves and 8, coo Liberty 
eights, as part of a total program of 95,993 aviation 
engines which the United States would have con- 
tributed before the end of 1 9 1 9 ! Engine production 
was going on at the rate of 200 complete Liberty 




Working drawings of the liberty motor, showing details of 
the internal construction of this wonderful engine 



16 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

twelves daily when the war was stopped. By April 
it would have reached io ; ooo a month, with no limit 
in sight. 

All this was accomplished in eighteen months. On 
May 29, 191 7, the first drawings of the design of the 
Liberty motor were made. On July 4, 191 7, the first 
engine built from these designs was flown. Less than 
nine months later six great plants were producing 
Liberty twelves in ever-increasing volume. In be- 
tween there was a heartbreaking interval of prepa- 
ration for quantity production that literally strained 
the industrial and technical resources of the nation. 
Everything was new. There was a blank sheet of 
paper on which could be written either success or 
failure. 

When the United States declared war on Germany 
on April 6, 191 7, there had not been made in America 
a single high-powered aviation engine suitable for 
use under war conditions. There were several manu- 
facturers producing low-powered engines suitable for 
training- 'planes; a great many of these engines had 
been built and placed in American-built training- 
'planes made for the British and Canadian govern- 
ments. One American company was just getting 
under way on a contract with the French government 
for the production of the Hispano-Suiza motor, one 
of the best European types of aviation engine, but 
developing only 150 horse-power. Another American 
company was prepared to build the nine-cylinder 
rotary Gnome engine, a type which had been popular 
for exhibition flying before the war, and which could 
be used on advanced training-'planes. We had noth- 
ing in America, however, to compare with the British 
Rolls-Royce, the high-powered Hispano-Suiza or the 
Lorraine-Dietrich of the French, the Italian Bugatti 



18 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

and Fiat, or even the German Mercedes. We did not 
even know what was needed, either in airplanes or 
aviation engines, to meet the conditions as they then 
existed on the western front. Aviation was then a 
part of the work of the Signal Corps of the army. 
The books of the Signal Corps showed that in the 
nine years between the first public flight of a heavier- 
than-air machine and our entrance into the war only 
118 'planes of all types had been delivered to the 
army; most of these had been destroyed or were 
obsolete in pattern. Sixty-six engines had been 
ordered ; fifty -four had been delivered. The army had 
practically no material, personnel, or experience in 
the designing, producing, or use of aeronautical 
equipment. 

The first thing we had to do was to ascertain the 
needs. A commission of officers and civilians was 
sent to Europe to study the engines used by the 
Allies. A survey was made to find out what was 
being done by American manufacturers in the build- 
ing of aviation engines for European governments 
with the idea that such production could be increased 
for the benefit of the United States. But while these 
two investigations were going on it was decided to 
marshal the engineering talent and facilities available 
in America to design and develop a suitable engine 
of our own. 

It was found that the time that had been required 
to adapt American manufacturing methods to the 
production of such European engines as the Hispano- 
Suiza and Gnome indicated the impossibility of adopt- 
ing a European design in the hope of any considerable 
production under two or three years. It was a much 
more logical and practical undertaking to design an 
American engine, with reference in the construction 




AN END VIEW OF THE LIBERTY MODEL A, THE ARMY TYPE OF MOTOR 



20 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

of every detail to American manufacturing methods 
and facilities. It was, obviously, the quickest way 
to produce results, since such an engine would not 
require radical changes in prevailing American shop 
practice, tool design, or the training of American 
mechanics. 

There was not among the Allies any well-proved 
engine of a horse-power sufficiently large to insure 
its continuing suitability for two years to come. 
Several were in process of development over there, 
but up to May, 191 7, none of these had been demon- 
strated to be an assured success, with the possible 
exception of the British Rolls-Royce. The highest 
power aviation engine then in use by the Allies, except 
the twelve-cylinder Rolls-Royce, which developed 
250 horse-power, was the Lorraine-Dietrich, a French 
engine of about the same power. England at that 
time was manufacturing or experimenting with about 
thirty-seven different kinds of engines, and France 
had no less than forty-six different types, necessitating 
almost innumerable quantities of repair parts. 

As soon as this situation became known to our army 
authorities, in May, 191 7, it was decided to proceed 
at once to design and develop a single type of engine 
with unit cylinders capable of various combinations 
and which in either four-, six-, eight-, or twelve- 
cylinder engines would perform nearly, if not all, the 
duties which war requirements would exact, and 
which could be kept in repair cheaply and easily. 

The designing of the American aviation engine, 
the Liberty motor, was a story so romantic that when 
it was first told to the American people, in the sum- 
mer of 191 7, it was received with incredulity. It 
was a characteristic American conception, carried 
out in a thoroughly American way; it stands as the 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 21 

most perfect example in recent technical history of 
that Yankee ingenuity which has for so many years 
excited the admiration and aroused the amazement 
of our European cousins, and which has furnished 
the theme for many romantic tales by writers like 
Jules Verne. It was a fresh proof to the doubters 




STEEL CYLINDERS FOR LIBERTY MOTORS 

Showing how the thin-steel water-jacket is attached by electric welding. This is 
a "Yankee trick" that puzzled the Germans. 



on this side and the scoffers on the other side of the 
Atlantic that America had lost none of its time- 
honored resourcefulness, that the Yankee of to-day 
is as ingenious as the traditional Yankee of half a 
century ago; it was also a demonstration and a warn- 
ing to Germany that the subjects of the Kaiser had 
no monopoly of technical and scientific ability. 

The two best qualified mechanical engineers in 
America for this task were called to Washington early 
in May, 191 7. They were J. G. Vincent, vice-presi- 
dent and chief engineer of the Packard Motor Car 
Company, of Detroit, and E. J. Hall, president of 



22 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the Hall-Scott Motor Company, of Berkeley, Cali- 
fornia. Mr. Vincent had for two years been working 
on the development of aviation engines and had built 
two, of approximately ioo horse-power and 200 
horse-power. These engines had been designed pri- 
marily for durability and weighed about three and 
a half to four pounds per horse-power. They had 
been developed and tested in racing automobiles, but 
had not yet been tested in the air. Mr. Vincent had, 
however, made many airplane flights and had been 
personally for a number of years a close student of 
aviation and the requirements of aviation engines. 

Mr. Hall had for eight years been building various 
types of aviation engines for foreign governments, 
chiefly in the Orient, and had patiently and pains- 
takingly developed an engine which he had made in 
four-cylinder, six-cylinder, and twelve-cylinder sizes, 
having a cylinder bore of five inches with a seven-inch 
piston stroke. 

The first requirement of the aviation engine which 
these two men were told to design as speedily as pos- 
sible was a maximum of power and efficiency com- 
bined with the minimum of weight; the average 
automobile motor weighs from six to ten pounds per 
horse-power, while the new aviation engine must 
weigh two pounds or less per horse-power. Second, 
the new engine must be able to run as required at 
practically its maximum power or speed during a 
large percentage of its operating time; automobile 
motors, except in racing, rarely, if ever, run at maxi- 
mum power or speed for more than a few minutes at 
any one period. Third, the consumption of fuel and 
of lubricating oil must be as limited as reasonably 
possible, in order to conserve space occupied in the 
'plane and weight to be carried in the air. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



23 



On May 29, 191 7, Mr. Vincent and Mr. Hall locked 
themselves in Room 201 in the New Willard Hotel 
in- Washington, and began to design an engine cal- 
culated to produce 200 horse-power in the eight- 




ASSEMBLING THE CYLINDERS OF LIBERTY MOTORS 

In the background, the electric; welding apparatus for attaching the water-jackets. 



cylinder size, and 300 horse-power when made with 
twelve cylinders. The task imposed upon the two 
engineers was a gigantic one. To agree upon the 
essential features of an engine that would work was 
not difficult for men of their experience ; to reduce the 
agreed-on elements to detailed working drawings, in- 
volving the most precise and accurate calculations of 
dimensions and clearances, was a piece of work which 
in ordinary engineering practice would have occupied 
a staff of designers and draftsmen for many months, 



24 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

on a machine as detailed and complicated as an avi- 
ation motor. Vincent and Hall did it in five days 
and nights! 

It does not detract in the least from the stupendous 
character of this achievement to point out that the 
Liberty motor, which was the result of this intensive 
feat of engineering, is a composite of well-tried and 
tested elements, principles, and methods. Vincent 
and Hall did not go into the hotel room with nothing 
but a blank sheet of paper, a set of drawing instru- 
ments, and their imaginations; they had with them 
working plans of internal-combustion engines of many 
types, and an enormous experience and intimate per- 
sonal knowledge of every type of engine that had 
ever propelled an airplane, as well as a staff of drafts- 
men accustomed to making exact calculations and 
reducing rough sketches to precise measurements. 
And in designing the Liberty motor they drew heavily 
upon the experience and practice of others. Some of 
the parts were copied bodily and without essential 
change from the second Packard aviation motor; I 
have personally taken the actual parts from this 
Packard motor and placed them in a Liberty motor, 
and vice versa. The cylinder size which ' Mr. Hall 
had developed in the latest Hall-Scott aviation motor, 
five-inch bore and seven-inch stroke, was adopted: 
this is the largest cylinder ever used in a mobile 
internal-combustion engine, except the Diesel marine 
engine. From the Cadillac was adopted the forked- 
end connecting-rod. From the German Mercedes was 
taken the lubrication system. The crank-case of 
aluminum alloy resembled that of the Rolls-Royce. 
All previous engines of the so-called V-type — that is, 
having two rows of cylinders set at an angle to each 
other, had an angle of sixty degrees between opposite 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 25 

cylinders; to economize space and to lessen head re- 
sistance the Liberty motor was designed with the 
cylinders set at an angle of but forty -five degrees. 
This was a very radical departure from accepted prin- 
ciples of engine construction; the theory of opposed 
cylinders had always been that the greater the angle 
the more efficient the engine and the less vibration 
to be absorbed by the machine. Vincent and Hall 
believed that this theory was based upon the results 
of poor design rather than upon any fundamental 
principle, and the success of the Liberty motor has 
proved them right. 

As fast as drawings of the different parts were com- 
pleted they were passed upon by the Joint Army and 
Navy Technical Board, and hurried to the Packard 
Motor Car Company plant in Detroit, where a staff 
of expert toolmakers fabricated each separate part 
by hand. So rapidly did they work that on the 4th 
of July, 191 7, less than six weeks after the designing 
of the engine was begun, an eight-cylinder Liberty 
motor, completely set up and running, was delivered 
in Washington. Tested at the Bureau of Standards, 
the new engine proved so much more efficient in all 
essential respects than any other aviation engine 
then known that it was immediately approved and 
adopted as the standard motor for American aircraft. 

Meantime word had been cabled by the Signal 
Corps representatives overseas that the pressing need 
was for more power in aviation engines. This first 
eight-cylinder engine was immediately expanded to 
the twelve-cylinder size. The first twelve-cylinder 
Liberty motor passed its successful fifty-hour test 
on August 25, 191 7, delivering from 301 to 320 horse- 
power during the test. In September, 191 7, it was 
given its first trial in the air at Mineola, Long Island, 



26 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the first time that an airplane had ever ascended from 
American soil with more than 150 horse-power in a 
single engine. 

The Liberty motor was a huge success! 

The hardest task, however, was yet to come. As 
every engineer knows, the designing of a machine 
and the painstaking fabrication by hand of the first 
experimental model is one thing; to equip factories, 
install machinery, make the tools and manufacture 
the finished product in quantities means a long, pa- 
tient, tireless, heart-breaking strain. The Allies were 
calling for our airplanes, our men were going over- 
seas to fight, and we had not the means wherewith 
to equip them with this essential arm of modern 
warfare. The situation called for organizing talent 
of the highest order, for speed unequaled in the his- 
tory of industry. In ordinary commercial practice 
it would have been at least a year, and more likely 
two years, before any manufacturer would undertake 
to turn out the finished machines in quantities. 

On the day the United States became a belligerent 
there had reported at Washington for service a young 
lawyer of Detroit who had for twelve years been a 
member of the United States Naval Reserve. His 
name was Harold H. Emmons. He had given up 
his law practice a few years before to become manager 
of a manufacturing concern operating nine different 
plants, which he had directed successfully. At the 
request of the Aircraft Production Board Lieutenant 
Emmons was detailed by the Navy Department to 
service with the army and placed in charge of engine 
production. The army and navy had agreed to com- 
bine their aviation programs so far as engines, among 
other phases of their joint needs, were concerned. 

The task which Lieutenant Emmons faced was 




MACHINING LIBERTY-MOTOR CYLINDERS 

They are first formed from steel tubing, the closed end being welded on. Then the 

shape is formed by hot-forging, the ring for attaching the water-jacket shrunk on 

and welded, and the cylinder is then machined to its final dimensions. 



28 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

even more difficult than that which Vincent and Hall 
had accomplished; it involved more elements of a 
pioneering nature. Nobody in America had ever 
built gasolene engines with steel cylinders except as 
a laboratory experiment; no machine bigger than a 
watch had ever been designed for such minute clear- 
ances and close tolerances; there was not a manu- 
facturing plant in the world equipped with either 
machines, tools, or skilled workmen competent to pro- 
duce these engines. Their manufacture involved the 
invention of processes which had never been used in 
industry, tests and measurements accurate and minute 
beyond, anything ever done on so large a machine. 
Beside the Liberty motor the finest automobile en- 
gine ever manufactured is a crude, clumsy makeshift. 
Automobile engines, even the best of them, are made 
principally of cast iron; weight is no objection and 
strength a comparatively minor factor. The Liberty 
motor is made of aluminum alloys and steel ; to pack 
440 horse-power into 880 pounds calls for the elim- 
ination of every superfluous ounce; the resources of 
metallurgical skill were taxed to give every part the 
maximum of strength with the least amount of metal. 
An engine of 60 horse-power is a giant among auto- 
mobile motors; to build the 440 horse-power Liberty 
there wasn't an engine-shop in the country that had 
machines large enough to hold the parts while they 
were being shaped. New machines had to be designed 
and built; then they had to be equipped with jigs, 
tools, and fixtures — more than 2,500 separate and 
distinct kinds of these appliances. Every toolmaking 
shop from the Mississippi to the Atlantic coast was 
commandeered that was not already engaged in war 
work; every toolmaker who could be spared from 
Naval or Shipping Board work was called in. Be- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



29 



cause of the rush and the need for utilizing compara- 
tively unskilled mechanics, and due, too, to a certain 
amount of pro-German interference, it was found, 
when the first tools were delivered at the engine 
plants, more than 80 per cent, of them were unfit 




THE FIRST LIBERTY MOTOR TURNED OUT AT THE FORD PLANT BEING 
ASSEMBLED FOR ITS FINAL TEST 



for use and had to be made over. In spite of this, 
deliveries of the Liberty motor were begun in No- 
vember on the original design of a 330-horse-power 
engine. General Pershing cabled that more power 
was needed, though none of the Allies had engines 
even as powerful as that. The engineers "stepped 
up" the motor to 375 horse-power. This involved 
mechanical changes and new tools. 

Under the increased power the crank-shafts broke. 



3 o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

The ablest metallurgist in the automobile industry, 
C. Harold Wills, of the Ford Motor Company, after 
weeks of study, discovered that the process which 
had always been used for crank-shaft manufacture 
caused internal strains in the forging, and devised a 
new process, which is already being applied to auto- 
mobile manufacture — one definite contribution to 
peace industry arising from the war. No sooner had 
the crank-shaft weakness been remedied, by re- 
designing not only this part, but all the parts working 
with it, than the officers of the A. E. F. demanded 
still more power, and the Liberty motor was again 
"stepped up": this time to 440 horse-power. Many 
parts had again to be enlarged and the metallurgical 
constituents changed — but some of the new engines 
have delivered above 500 horse-power! 

In the beginning nobody knew any better way of 
making steel cylinders than by boring them, slowly 
and expensively, out of blocks of steel ; the Ford works 
devised a method of shaping them from cold-drawn 
steel tubing, slicing a piece of tube across diagonally 
and welding the turned-over end to form a cap. How 
to fasten the thin -steel outer casing of the water- 
jacket to the cylinder was a puzzle; the Packard 
Company solved it by an electric-welding process, 
simple in its application, yet so puzzling to the 
uninitiated that it is reported the Germans were un- 
able to unravel it when they studied the first Liberty 
motors brought down in their lines. 

Detroit contains probably more mechanics accus- 
tomed to working with micrometer calipers and gages 
than any other city in the world, yet so delicate are 
the final grindings and adjustments of the Liberty 
motor that those made in one plant are not interchange- 
able with those made in another plant, nor even with 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 31 

each other, without painstaking attention by a 
skilled machinist. It is not deemed sufficient, for 
instance, to finish the contiguous surfaces of the two 
halves of the aluminum crank-case as well as this 
can be done by machinery; before they are perma- 
nently mated they are ' ' lapped ' ' or ground to an oil- 
tight, gas-tight joint by rubbing them against each 
other with minutely pulverized ground glass as an 
abrasive. Those two halves fit, and no other part 
can thereafter be substituted for either of them with- 
out going through the same process. And since the 
crank-case is the foundation upon which the whole 
engine is built, a variation of a ten-thousandth of an 
inch resulting from this lapping must be compensated 
for in the fitting of every part subsequently added. 
It is no unfounded assertion that better automobile 
engines than were ever produced in America will be 
built in Detroit in the years to come because of the 
Liberty motor. Detroit knew more about engines 
than any other city; now it knows about working to 
a thousandth of an inch where it used to work in 
sixteenths ! 

How well Lieutenant Emmons succeeded in or- 
ganizing and speeding up engine production is dem- 
onstrated by the fact that on May 29, 19 18, just one 
year after the beginning of the first design of the 
engine, 1,100 Liberty motors had been produced and 
delivered into service. In January, 1918, the first 
three Liberty motors to go overseas were shipped to 
the A. E. F. In March, 191 8, ten were shipped to 
the British, six to the French, and five to the Italians. 
By June 7th tests abroad had proceeded so far that 
the British Air Ministry cabled to Lord Reading, the 
British ambassador at Washington, that the excellent 
results obtained from the Liberty engine placed it at 



32 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

once in the first line of high-powered engines and 
convinced them that it would be a most valuable 
contribution to the Allied aviation program. On 
September 26th the British Air Ministry reported 
that in identical machines it performed at least as 
well as the Rolls-Royce, a concession the importance 
of which can only be appreciated by those who un- 
derstand the devotion of the British to the motto, 
"Made in Great Britain." To any one who under- 
stands this phase of British character the admission 
of the equality of the Liberty motor amounts to con- 
clusive proof that it is the better engine of the two, 
which means unqualifiedly the best aviation engine 
yet built. The Rolls-Royce is nearest to the Liberty 
motor in power and efficiency, but it weighs 100 
pounds more and delivers 100 horse-power less than 
the Liberty motor, while its maximum production in 
England has never exceeded seventy engines per week. 
Engineers of other nations were even more generous 
m their praise of the Liberty motor. Birkhight, 
the designer of the Hispano-Suiza engine in France, 
advised Count Poniatowski, the head of the French 
Technical Advisory Board on Aviation, that the 
Liberty engine was superior to any high-power engine 
developed on the Continent. Nor were these merely 
idle compliments. The British government at once 
placed an order with the American government for 
1,000 Liberty motors and later asked for another 
4,500 to be delivered by the end of 191S. The French 
made inquiry as to the possibility of securing 20 per 
cent, of America's total output of Liberty motors. 
The Italian government also indicated a desire to 
purchase a large number for immediate delivery. It 
had been planned to build 22,500 Liberty twelves to 
take care only of the requirements of the American 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 33 

army and navy. With this recognition of the supe- 
riority of the ; Liberty motor, increased, orders for 
Liberty twelves up to 48,000 were placed, and 8,000 
Liberty eights were ordered, while the English, French, 
and Italians redesigned their 'planes to adapt them 
for the installation of the Liberty engine. 

At the time the armistice was signed there had 
been actually manufactured and delivered 15,572 
twelve-cylinder Liberty motors, less than fifteen 
months after the first twelve-cylinder Liberty had 
been made and tested. Of these, 3,742 had been 
turned over to the American navy, 1,089 shipped to 
the Allies, 5,323 delivered at airplane-manufacturing 
plants, 907 sent to aviation-fields for training pur- 
poses, and 4,511 separate engines in addition to those 
installed in 'planes shipped to the A. E. F. in France. 

There is no manner of doubt that the successful 
development of the Liberty motor and its production 
in these enormous quantities was one of the most 
important of the deciding factors that brought about 
the surrender of Germany. So long as Germany 
retained the control of the air she saw victory ahead. 
Up to the time of America's entry into the war the 
balance between the air forces of Germany and of 
the Allies was at all times very close ; the loss of a few 
hundred airplanes by either side could at any time 
have meant the difference between victory and defeat. 
Germany scoffed when news first reached that coun- 
try of America's intention to put into the air within 
two years several times as many 'planes as the entire 
forces of all the armies on the western front had ever 
been able to muster. Germany knew it could not 
be done. By November, 191 8, Germany had dis- 
covered that the impossible was being done, and 
surrendered to Yankee ingenuity. 



34 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

The troubles of Lieutenant Emmons and the build- 
ers of aviation engines did not begin and end with 
the Liberty motor alone. The Le Rhone, the Hispano- 
Suiza, and the Bugatti, three new European types of 
engines, production of which was under way in 
America when the war ended, involved complicated 
and difficult mechanical and technical problems. These 
three other types of low-power engines are used by 
the American air forces for various purposes. The 
Gnome engine, the first successful rotary motor and 
for years before the Great War regarded as the best 
of all aviation engines, was just being got into fac- 
tory production in America when the war ended; it 
was designed principally for use in advanced training- 
'planes. The Bugatti was a new Italian engine, having 
sixteen cylinders arranged in blocks of four. It had 
given good service on the Italian front, where some 
of the officers of the American Air Service saw it and 
had one sent over to this country. An American 
motor company undertook to make it and had de- 
livered eleven on an order of 2,000 when the armistice 
was signed. 

The OX- 5 engine and the A- 7 -A are low-powered 
motors, of types which were in general use in America 
for aviation before the war began. They involve 
no new methods or principles in their manufacture, 
being built of cast iron, like automobile motors, but 
of lighter design. Of the OX- 5 the government had 
more than eight thousand on hand when the war 
ended. There were 2,250 of the A- 7 -A. The training 
of aviators, both in the army and the navy, is not to 
be discontinued; it will continue as a permanent 
measure of national defense. For this purpose, re- 
gardless of changes that may be made in types and 
designs of 'planes — and they will be many — there is 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 35 

a sufficient supply of engines in the stock on hand 
of these two kinds for ten years and more to come. 

In point of all-around usefulness for commercial 
aviation, as well as for such a variety of governmental 
uses as mail-carrying, exploration, surveying, forest 
patrol, etc., extremely valuable service will be ren- 
dered by the 4,101 Hispano-Suiza and the 1,178 Le 
Rhone engines which were on hand when hostilities 
ceased. The Le Rhone is a new type of rotary engine, 
"the finest ever built, " army officers say. It develops 
80 horse-power with nine cylinders. This engine 
was developed in France in the third year of the war. 
Our officers saw it in use and advised its production 
in America. 

Drawings and specifications were obtained from the 
French makers, not without a good deal of difficulty. 
Finally they reached America. The drawings proved 
almost unintelligible, the specifications impossible. A 
cabled request for better specifications brought the 
reply that the ones sent were all that were obtainable 
— and these contained such assertions as that the 
crank-shaft, the point where the greatest strain comes, 
was made of mild steel ! Nothing could be done until 
a Le Rhone engine was obtained and shipped over. 
Every part of it was first measured and copied in 
exact model, then turned over to metallurgical chem- 
ists, who subjected it to analysis, while American 
engineers undertook to improve the design of the 
engine construction. As a result the Le Rhone en- 
gines turned out in America are of better material 
than the French makers used, and a loss of power that, 
in the French engine, ran as high as 33^ per cent, 
has been reduced to 3 per cent. Many French en- 
gineers who were inclined to scoff at American manu- 
facturing methods were converted when they had an 



36 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

opportunity to witness the performance of some of 
the 250 Le Rhone engines made in this country and 
shipped to the A. E. F., and to compare them with 
the motors of the same type made in their own plants. 
The Hispano-Suiza engine is a Spanish motor which 
was being manufactured under contract for the French 
government by an American company when the Unit- 
ed States entered the war, although actual produc- 
tion had not begun. This is an eight-cylinder engine 
and is the only motor with steel cylinders manufact- 
ured in the United States before the Liberty motor 
was produced. It is made in three sizes, of 150, 180, 
and 300 horse-power. It is an engine of the highest 
grade, but weighs more per horse-power than the 
Liberty. Like all other aviation engines, production 
of this machine was placed under the control of the 
Aircraft Production Board. The best proof of the 
wisdom of the Aircraft Production Board in under- 
taking to design and build a completely new American 
motor is found in the fact that, with completed en- 
gines before them to work from, a corps of French 
engineers and machinists who had worked in the 
manufacture of them and adequate capital and equip- 
ment, it had taken the Wright-Martin Aircraft Cor- 
poration thirteen months from the time of beginning 
to make the tools before they were able to produce 
their first Hispano-Suiza motor. 



Ill 

THE CREATION OF THE AIRPLANE INDUSTRY 

IF the path of the designers and builders of airplane 
engines was beset with obstacles, that of the men 
who undertook to establish an airplane industry in 
America was even more perilous. How they over- 
came it will some day be recognized as one of the 
most romantic chapters of America's industrial and 
technical history. Misrepresentations and undue 
boastfulness so magnified the proposed program in 
the public mind that the prevailing impression is 
undoubtedly one of woeful failure. On the contrary, 
when our country's almost total unpreparedness in 
aircraft plants and knowledge of the methods of manu- 
facture is considered, the achievement of producing 
in eighteen months more airplanes than all the Allies 
had built since the beginning of the war is something 
to be proud of. 

There has been much emphasis laid on the delays 
and difficulties incident to the selection and determi- 
nation upon particular types of planes; the truly ro- 
mantic story of the airplane as developed and pro- 
duced under war's stress is one of almost superhuman 
struggle against unknown and overwhelming odds. 
There was no chart or compass for the unknown seas 
that had to be navigated by those who undertook 
to build our aerial fleet. There was at least a body of 
experience in engine construction and tool design to 



3 8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

guide the builders of engines, but no manufacturer 
had ever engaged in any business comparable to the 
airplane industry. The principles of construction 
had to be mastered, the material to be used not only 
to be determined upon, but invented, discovered, or 
improvised. To decide that spruce was needed was 
one thing; to get the spruce meant, first, exploration 
of unmapped forests, then the development and ap- 
plication of new methods of lumbering, of seasoning, 
and of shipping the wood. When all the Irish linen 
in the world was used up and millions of yards of 
fabric were still needed for airplane wing-coverings, 
a new fabric had to be invented and spindles and 
looms converted to its manufacture. The whole earth 
did not produce the oil needed to lubricate the high- 
speed airplane engines at the temperatures involved 
in active service; plantations of castor-beans had to 
be set out and mills erected for expressing the oil. 
Did airplane propellers fly apart? We invented a 
glue that makes a joint stronger than the solid wood 
itself! And these are but a few of the problems that 
had to be solved before we could even begin to build 
airplanes in quantity. 

When hostilities began in 19 14 the airplane was a 
toy. Its manufacture was in the hands of inventors 
and experimenters, whose aim was to make each suc- 
ceeding machine an improvement on its predecessor, 
with the result that it is extremely doubtful whether, 
outside of Germany, there had ever been built two 
airplanes exactly alike. The scientific principles of 
aerodynamics were barely beginning to be understood. 
A thousand engineers with a thousand conflicting 
theories were struggling with the problems of stresses 
and strains, engine power and wing design, but the 
airplane was still chiefly a toy, and an extremely 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 39 

dangerous toy at that. Poets and men of vision had 
dreamed of 

i . . Heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales. 

But hard-headed men of affairs looked askance at 
the fantastic dreams of passenger-carrying, freight- 
carrying airplanes. Under the slow and orderly 



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MAKING THE TIDE HELP 

One of the rafts of airplane spruce floated to the desired point on shore by scientific 
utilization of tides and ocean currents. 

processes of peace-time development there might 
have come a time, perhaps fifty years hence, perhaps 
a hundred, when these dreams would be realized. 
Four years of war have brought them to what amounts 
to a complete realization. 

For nearly three years before the United States 
entered the war American companies were building 
'planes and parts of 'planes for the Allies. Their 
experience was the only foundation we had on which 
to erect the huge program we undertook in 191 7. 
To-day the manufacture of heavier-than-air flying- 



4 o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

machines and their equipment is a well-defined, 
thoroughly understood, and fairly commercialized 
industry. The men in control, who have developed 
this industry, are among the solid, substantial business 
men of America and Europe. The dangerous toy of 
five years ago became, first, the most spectacular of 
all the tools of war, and in its development to that end 
became as safe and stable a vehicle as the automobile 
itself, in that risk to life and limb in a properly con- 
structed modern airplane is hardly greater than the 
risk to life and limb in an automobile ; the most serious 
danger in the operation of either lies in lack of skill 
or want of care on the part of the driver. 

Aerodynamics, from a mystery, has become a well- 
understood branch of science; theories have been 
scrapped; demonstrated, accepted facts have taken 
their place. That is not to say that the airplane 
for any particular purpose has been either perfected 
or standardized; neither has the automobile or, for 
that matter, the steam-engine. But we know to-day 
how to build airplanes, in quantities, cheaply by com- 
parison with methods that formerly obtained, what 
materials to use and where and how to obtain them, 
and we have actually built thousands and tens of 
thousands of many types, adaptable to a wide variety 
of commercial peace-time uses. 

Moreover, in the development in America of the 
airplane and airplane-engine industry from almost 
absolute zero to a state of productivity almost un- 
believable, in a period of eighteen months, we have 
not only furnished one of the demonstrations of our 
technical and industrial superiority over Germany, 
but have actually added to the world's wealth in 
many collateral and unrelated lines of activity by 
the enforced necessity of devising, inventing, and ap- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 41 

plying materials and methods that were unknown or 
non-existent before America undertook the gigantic 
task of building an aerial fleet that would, by sheer 
weight of numbers, beat down the last of Germany's 
defenses. 

When the United States entered the war our army 
possessed few airplanes and still fewer engines suit- 




HOW TO CUT A LOG WITHOUT 
WASTE 

This diagram shows the sawyer how 
to get the largest number of feet of 
straight-grained airplane stock from 
spruce logs. The cuts are made par- 
allel to the bark; the coarse heart -wood, 
indicated by the inner circle, is worth- 
less for airplanes. 



HOW TO GET ALL STRAIGHT-GRAIN 
STOCK 

A peculiarity of spruce is the "twisted 
grain " that is frequently found. By 
sawing the logs as indicated in this 
diagram it has been found possible to 
obtain practically straight-grained air- 
plane stock from such trees. 



able for the propulsion of aircraft. An official survey 
of our military airplane situation made on May 12, 
1 91 7. showed that in the eight preceding years the 
United States army had ordered 334 airplanes from 
sixteen manufacturers; these were of ten types and 
thirty-two different designs, and, as I have already 
pointed out, only a portion of them had ever been 
delivered to the army. 

When the armistice was signed, eighteen months 



42 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

later, the United States military forces had on hand 
12,285 airplanes. 'Plane production was increasing 
at a rate that would have given us 10,000 service- 
'planes by the summer of 1919, although it had been 
agreed between the United States and the Allies that 
this country should contribute proportionately more 
engines than 'planes, partly because, while we could 
make engines faster than Europe could, they had 
developed their 'plane-making capacity to a higher 
degree, and partly because the shipment abroad of 
engines was a simple matter in comparison with the 
shipment of finished 'planes. 

In learning how to build airplanes we literally did 
so "from the ground up." There is no phase of our 
war story that carries a stronger flavor of romance 
or paints a truer picture of a winning fight against 
overwhelming odds than that of the "Spruce Regi- 
ments." It is more than merely an interesting story, 
for in learning how most efficiently and economically 
to obtain the spruce lumber needed for airplane con- 
struction, or, rather, in applying the knowledge which 
the United States Forest Service had acquired through 
years of scientific research, but which had been scoffed 
at by "practical" lumbermen, we have learned how 
to achieve the apparent paradox of obtaining high- 
grade lumber more cheaply and at the same time 
conserving our forest resources. 

This has come about through the intensive applica- 
tion of scientific methods to every detail of the process 
of converting spruce-trees into the wings of the army 
and navy, from the exploration of the forest to the 
shipment of the finished lumber. Moreover, in the 
treatment and technical manipulation of the wood in 
the airplane plants and factories, there were devel- 
oped, under the pressure of war needs, new methods 



44 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

and processes, the application of which to a thousand 
of the arts and industries of peace is of the greatest 
value and importance. 

Spruce was essential for airplanes and airplanes 
were essential for winning the war. Other factors 
contributed, of course, from doughboys to dread- 
noughts, but without the numerical superiority of 
aircraft on the side of the Allies Germany would not 
have been forced to quit when she did. And nothing 
takes the place of spruce for airplanes. Other woods 
are as tough, but heavier; the difference in speed 
between a 'plane made of spruce and one of fir, for 
instance, on the same model, is measured by miles 
per hour. Spruce is elastic, absorbing shocks instead 
of breaking under them. Clear, straight -grained 
spruce does not splinter when hit by a bullet; the 
missile passes through, leaving a clean, round hole 
that does not materially weaken the structure. 

Even before the United States entered the war the 
forests of the East and parts of the Far West were 
being cruised for spruce for the Allies' airplane needs. 
When we came in and our airplane program was 
fixed at 22,500 training- and service-'planes by the 
spring of 1919, the first and vital question to be 
answered was, "Where can we get the spruce?" 

Clear, straight-grained spruce had been almost an 
unknown commercial commodity for many years; 
many lumbermen were shipping spruce to the Allies, 
but the waste was terrific. Out of a million feet of 
lumber perhaps a hundred thousand might be usable; 
this, with the waste involved in shaping the parts 
from the rough timbers or "cants," might build a 
hundred airplanes. And the agents of the Allies were 
paying up to $300 a thousand feet for this stuff and 
taking whatever they could get at that price. Clearly, 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



45 



new sources of spruce and new methods of getting it 
out must be found if our needs and the growing needs 
of the Allies were to be supplied. So the government 
at Washington decided to go into the lumber business 
and provide spruce for everybody. 

There was spruce in plenty, the giant Sitka spruce 
especially, with its huge trunks measuring from six 




A SITKA SPRUCE LOG 
Many of these trees cut up for airplane stock measured twelve feet in diameter. 



to ten or twelve feet through at the butt, on the west 
slope of the Coast Range in northern Oregon and 
Washington. But that country had never been 
lumbered; there were no railroads, hardly any other 
roads. 

Mills were a long way off ; besides, there were labor 
troubles, fomented by the I. W. W. and German 
influences. Lumbermen looked at the government 
program and said, "It can't be done." One man said 



46 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

it could be done. He had been thinking about this 
spruce problem and the Sitka spruce of the Pacific 
coast, and he thought he knew how to get the lumber 
out. So they told him at Washington to go ahead and 
see what he could do. 

This is what he did in a little more than one year: 

Located more than eleven billion feet of spruce in 
a fifty -mile strip of forest. 

Built thirteen lines of railroad, with 167 miles of 
main line and 149 miles of branches, to tap the terri- 
tory containing 2,345,000,000 feet of this lumber. 

Built the largest sawmill in the world, and three 
smaller ones. 

Organized the "Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lum- 
bermen," with 90,000 members, and put an end to 
labor troubles in the logging camps and mills. 

Sent an army of 30,000 soldiers into the woods to 
fight the Hun with axes and saws. 

Produced 104,351,000 feet of airplane spruce and 
72,385,000 feet of fir, of which 69,879,000 feet of 
spruce and 52,932,000 feet of fir were shipped to the 
Allies. 

Cut the cost of spruce, including total cost of rail- 
roads, sawmills, and all permanent improvements, 
to $180 a thousand feet. 

These are merely the gross results of the work of 
Brig. -Gen. Price P. Disque, the man whose com- 
bination of vision and force gave the United States 
and all the Allies spruce when they needed it worst. 

When the United States entered the war General 
Disque had tried to get back into the service with 
his old rank of cavalry captain. He had enlisted in 
the regular army as a private in 1899, been promoted 
to a commission while serving in the Philippines, and 
had resigned to become warden of the Michigan 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 47 

State Penitentiary. Here he had made the unique 
record of placing a penal institution on a self-support- 
ing basis, by developing the industrial abilities of its 
inmates and marketing their product at prices that 
paid the entire cost of maintaining the institution. 

Instead of getting back into the cavalry he was 
commissioned a lieutenant-colonel in the Signal Corps 




HAULING SPRUCE LOGS TO THE GOVERNMENT AIRPLANE SAWMILL 

Hundreds of miles of railroad like this were built to get the lumber needed for airplanes. 



and assigned to the job of getting out spruce, because 
he had once expressed himself as believing that all 
the spruce needed could be got out of the west slope 
of the Coast Range. He was not an engineer and had 
no experience in lumbering, but, as events proved, 
he was an organizer with a profound knowledge of 
human nature and a rare belief in the efficacy of 
scientific methods properly applied. 

Old-fashioned methods of lumbering were to cut 
every tree in the area logged. Colonel Disque called 
on the Forest Service for expert advice, and the first 
program of scientific forestry on an important scale 
was begun. 

"Cruisers" were sent into the woods, with carefully 



48 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

prepared maps on a large scale, and told to indicate 
on these maps the spruce and fir trees conforming to 
certain specified requirements. Commercial lumber- 
men sat back and laughed; such piecemeal methods 
would never succeed, they were sure. But the 
' ' cruisers ' ' came back with their maps thickly dotted 
in certain sections, less thickly dotted in others, 
hardly dotted at all in places where the lumbermen 
had advised running roads. There was spruce in 
these places, true, but not big enough or straight 
enough for what was needed. 

No time was wasted on those areas, but railroad 
lines were surveyed and run right into the heart of 
the thickest stands of the biggest timber. There 
was no guesswork about it. Where the survey showed 
a railroad cost of less than three dollars a thousand 
feet of spruce tapped by the line, it paid to build the 
railroad. The croakers predicted the roads couldn't 
be built; steel couldn't be got for the bridges and 
trestles. The bridges and trestles, built of logs, but 
built with all the scientific accuracy of the most 
modern steel structure, that carry these thirteen rail- 
roads into the woods, are marvels of engineering. 
And into the tracts where there wasn't enough air- 
plane spruce to pay for running railroads there were 
built motor roads, "corduroy" paved, so that motor- 
trucks could bring the logs out. 

With the old method of sawing logs into lumber the 
log is first "squared," then sawed into beams and 
boards. That answers for ordinary purposes, but for 
airplanes it caused great waste, for the grain of the 
tree runs parallel with the bark, and the timbers got 
out in the old way were sawed parallel to the heart, 
so the grain ran diagonally. This meant that two- 
thirds of almost every timber had to be cut away 



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RIVING A SPRUCE LOG FOR AIRPLANE STOCK 

Every piece of wood that goes into an airplane must be perfectly straight-grained. 

As the spruce grows often with a spiral grain, the timbers or "cants" must be split 

or rived from the log instead of being sawed. 



So YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

before a straight-grained piece was available. There 
is not much more than a hundred board-feet of lumber 
in an airplane, but it used to take a thousand feet of 
stuff as it came from the sawmill to get this amount 
of straight-grained stock; now the loss is less than 
one-third of what it used to be. 

First the difficulty was overcome by splitting the 
logs — "riving," they call it in the lumber-camps. A 
split log naturally follows the run of the grain. Only 
rived beams, or cants, were accepted, until Colonel 
Disque got his big sawmill running at Vancouver, 
Washington. Then he brought in expert sawyers from 
the Eastern hardwood mills, who introduced a method 
of sawing that follows the grain wherever it runs. Even 
the spiral grain peculiar to spruce-trees, but never 
considered of importance before, does not baffle the 
scientific sawmill man who uses the new methods. 

For some unexplained reason spruce-trees have a 
tendency to twist while growing; one recently felled 
in Alaska had made five complete revolutions in its 
eighty- three years of life, as the corkscrew-twisted 
grain disclosed. Clear, straight-grained planks, fit to 
go into airplanes, are sawed from even these twisted 
trunks in the Vancouver mill. 

The commercial mills were not getting out enough 
good airplane stock — only 25 per cent, of their out- 
put was fit for that use. Colonel Disque decided to 
build the biggest sawmill in the world. Lumbermen 
said it would take a year. It was finished in forty-five 
working days! In this mill 65 per cent, of the spruce 
brought in was converted into perfect airplane lum- 
ber — and a big commercial market was made for the 
planks, beams, and boards that did not come up to 
airplane specifications, in sections where Western 
spruce was never used before. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 51 

The Vancouver mill covers about five acres. It is 
operated for quality rather than quantity. A model 
of a finished airplane wing beam serves as a guide to 
the sawyers who make the final cuts that reduce the 
logs to shipping dimensions. 

Riving great logs where they fall, so they can be 
brought out by motor-truck; utilizing tides and ocean 
currents : scientifically studied, to bring log rafts to 
shore at determined points without the dangerous 
towing through the surf — these and a hundred tech- 
nical details and refinements have revolutionized 
lumbering methods in the Northwest, because the 
hard-headed, "practical" lumbermen, having seen 
the results demonstrated, have been quick to adopt 
the new methods. 

Felling trees and sawing them into lumber isn't 
all that has to be done before you build airplanes 
out of the product, however. Green lumber won't 
do, and the processes of seasoning that have been 
mainly used either take too long — a couple of years 
or less — or make the wood crack and check and warp, 
or both. Here, again, science scored a victory, in 
the application to war's necessities of a method of 
seasoning developed through patient laboratory re- 
search. 

Under the quickest method of kiln-drying lumber in 
ordinary commercial use, from six to eight weeks were 
required, and lumber so seasoned was seldom satis- 
factory, shrinking in dry weather and swelling in 
damp climates. Open-air seasoning took a year or 
more; either process took no account of internal 
strains that cause splitting and "checking." 

For years the Forest Service Laboratory at Madison, 
Wisconsin, had been giving the most intensive scien- 
tific study to the subject of wood-seasoning. Almost 



52 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

at the beginning of the war an experiment was per- 
fected on a commercial scale. The patents had already 
been dedicated to public use by H. D. Tiemann, the 
inventor of the process, and it was immediately put 
into effect for the seasoning of airplane lumber. 

It has been a wonderful success. Huge kilns using 
the Tiemann process have been erected at Vancouver 
and other sawmill points on the coast, and the season- 
ing process, which formerly took many weeks, now 
takes from eight to fourteen days! Moreover, the 
method being based upon scientific study of the in- 
ternal composition of wood and the multiplicity of 
elements that enter into its behavior under given 
conditions, wood seasoned by the new process is not 
only free from all defects of the old methods, but 
actually stronger, more elastic, and tougher than when 
air-dried. 

The Tiemann dry kiln is merely a closed chamber 
in which the lumber is piled in a certain specified 
way and the temperature and humidity are definitely 
and automatically regulated in proportion to the 
progress of the seasoning process. The lumber is 
dried from the inside toward the surface, at a speed 
carefully calculated for each kind and size of wood. 
Water-sprays keep the confined atmosphere of the 
kiln at a predetermined degree of humidity; there is 
no guesswork about the procedure at any stage, and 
the result is perfect lumber. 

I hardly need to point out the permanent industrial 
value of a process of wood-seasoning that not only 
saves time and money, but gives a better product 
than was obtainable before at any cost. To the 
furniture-maker who would like to build bureau- 
drawers that won't stick in summer and rattle in 
winter, to the user of wood for every purpose from 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



53 



house-building to the manufacture of ukuleles, the 
war demonstration of this scientific method and its 
commercial practicability has proved a heritage of 
great and continuing value. 



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THE KILN THAT MADE OUR AIRPLANE PROGRAM POSSIBLE 

Diagram showing the operation of the Tiemann dry kiln for seasoning lumber in 
two weeks or less, where it formerly took a year or more. Through the use of this 
kiln, which was developed by the Forest Service and dedicated to public use, we 
were able to turn out enough seasoned spruce for our own and the Allies' airplane needs. 



What has been learned about the manipulation of 
lumber by the makers of aircraft is not without its 
permanent and valuable import in the arts of peace. 
Not only have the builders of airplanes had to master 



54 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the fundamentals of the new science of aerodynamics, 
with which business men were totally unfamiliar, but 
they had to apply to the fabrication of devices of 
wood and canvas manufacturing and production 
methods that had not before been applied except to 
metal products. They learned as they built, until 
now we know vastly more about wooden construction 
than ever was known before by any considerable 
body of business men. 

The whole fabric of an airplane is composed, as one 
engineer puts it, of "struts, stretchers, stresses, and 
strains." Incredibly light and thin veneers, glued 
together, give almost the strength of steel. Braces 
and beams that look like solid wood, but that are 
in reality only shells, with the internal substance 
cut away by carefully determined rules and measure- 
ments, until they weigh half what they did before, 
prove as strong as solid sticks. As delicate as a grass- 
hopper's wing, the transverse webs that shape the air- 
plane's wings are carved from the thinnest of boards, 
yet under the strain of the piano-wire braces they 
hold like rigid iron. The secret is, first, straight- 
grained, clear, properly seasoned spruce, and, second, 
glue. 

Perhaps nothing more revolutionary has resulted 
from the scientific research set on foot by the war 
than the casein glue, invented in the United States 
Bureau of Standards and now universally used in 
airplane construction. Ordinary glue is made from 
hoofs, horns, cartilage from the slaughter-houses, from 
the trimming of hides and other animal scrap; the 
better grades are made from the sounds, or air- 
bladders, of codfish. But the best glue ordinarily in 
use had proved not good enough for airplane manu- 
facture. When we sent airplanes to the Mexican 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



55 



border in 1916 they literally fell to pieces in the hot, 
humid climate ; propellers, which are built up of 
laminations of wood, laid end for end to get an exact 
balance, new apart at high speeds; the glue would 
not hold. 

Seeking new sources from which to obtain a supply 
of a suitable adhesive, the government scientists hit 




WORKERS IN A NEW ART 

Before we could build a single effective military airplane we had to train the thousands 

of workers in an industry that had no traditions, no history, and no foundation on 

which to build. 



upon casein, the remarkable substance obtained from 
skimmed milk, from which almost anything, appar- 
ently, can be made. Casein has been used to make 
billiard-balls, for a thousand other things to imitate 
ivory and to replace celluloid with a non-inflammable 
substitute, but that it would yield a glue was un- 
dreamed of. The process was quickly developed and 
half a dozen large factories were soon producing this 
and another new glue made from blood, in great 
quantities. 



56 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

The new casein glue is applied cold. It sets in 
six hours, and there is no chance for the user to change 
his mind thereafter. I saw a propeller, the lamina- 
tions of which had been fastened together with this 
glue, that had been boiled for five days, yet under a 
laboratory test the wood itself — tough oak and walnut 
— pulled apart and the glue did not yield! 

I do not need to point out the commercial and in- 
dustrial importance and permanent value of this war- 
developed invention ; any one's imagination will readily 
picture furniture that can safely be left out on the 
summer porch, violins that will not suffer from sea- 
travel, tables and chairs that can be placed close to 
the radiator without falling to pieces — these are only 
the perfectly obvious applications of the new glue. 
But its range of usefulness may be far wider. Packing- 
boxes put together without nails may be only a fore- 
runner of houses built so solidly of glued-on veneer 
weather-boarding that they will outlast the centuries. 
With the new adhesive wood is welded together as 
solidly as the blacksmith welds two iron bars into one. 

After the wood has been fashioned and glued and 
wired into place comes the wing-cover fabric, with- 
out which the airplane would still be but a skeleton. 
Up to America's entry into the war but one material 
was available for this purpose — Irish linen. Linen 
had certain definite advantages over all other fabrics: 
the fineness, strength, and length of the fiber made 
it at once the most durable and the least likely to 
tear when punctured. 

A bullet-hole through stretched cotton cloth speedily 
becomes a huge, jagged rent and a crash follows; 
through Irish linen it remains a round bullet-hole, 
and the 'plane can fly with a couple of dozen or more 
of such punctures. One French 'plane, early in the 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 57 

war, returned safely from a trip over the enemy's 
lines with 142 bullet-holes in its wings. 

But all the linen Ireland could weave was not 
enough for the stimulated production of 'planes when 




COVERING AN AIRPLANE'S WINGS 

Girls sewing the Yankee substitute for Irish linen on the wing-frame of a De Havil- 

land 4. 



we got into the war. Little flax is grown in Ireland; 
it comes mainly from Russia and Belgium. These 
supplies were curtailed, and even though flax could 
have been grown elsewhere it would have to be sent 
to Ireland to be spun and woven, for in no other ac- 
cessible part of the globe is there the combination 



58 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

of temperature, humidity, and mineral constituents 
in the water necessary to ' ' rot ' ' the flax and make it 
yield up fiber of precisely the quality required. 

American scientists experimented with a hundred 
substitutes. Silk would not answer, and could not 
be got in the quantities needed; no metal, even as 
light as aluminium, would stand up under the vibra- 
tion. There was one American fiber that might do, 
sea-island cotton. It was used only for sewing- thread 
and for the finest, sheerest fabrics, however. There 
were neither spindles nor looms adapted to convert 
it into the heavy fabric needed for airplanes. Labora- 
tory experiments proved that it could be woven into 
a wonderful cloth. Tests of this cloth, stretched 
diagonally on the airplane wings, indicated that the 
perfect substitute for Irish linen had been found. 

The government practically commandeered the big 
cotton-mills at Fall River and set them to work on 
the new cloth. We had almost used up all the Irish 
linen we could get — 3,187,000 yards — when the new 
fabric became available. At the time the armistice 
was signed we had produced 7,790,000 yards of air- 
plane cloth, thousands of 'planes had been built of it, 
and in every way it had done all that was required of 
it. And our cotton manufacturers had learned some- 
thing new — how to make a cloth that will supply 
hundreds of the purposes for which Irish linen has 
been used, that will wear like iron, is almost water- 
proof and looks as well as it wears, its mercerized 
threads giving it a smoothness of finish comparable 
to linen itself. 

After the cloth has been stretched on the wings 
it is treated with a varnish known in the aircraft in- 
dustry simply as "dope." Dope has the peculiar 
quality of shrinking the fabric permanently, so that 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



59 



it is as taut as a drum-head, and of rendering it water- 
proof, while at the same time penetrating the fibers 
and practically gluing them together, reducing the 
danger of tearing. The principal constituent of dope 
is glacial acetic acid. This is derived from the dis- 




PUTTING ON THE "DOPE" 

"Dope" is the term used in the aircraft industry for the acetone varnish that renders 

the fabric waterproof and at the same time shrinks it tight to the frame and sticks 

the fibers together so the cloth does not tear when pierced by a bullet. 



tillation of wood, in the manufacture of wood alcohol. 
To produce dope in sufficient quantities new alcohol 
stills were set up and new processes devised that are 
of considerable commercial importance in many 
branches of industry. 

Castor-oil is the only lubricant available in quanti- 
ties that can be used in airplanes when high altitudes 
are to be negotiated. In the extreme low temperatures 
of the upper air the best mineral lubricants chill and 
even freeze; castor-oil remains fluid at many degrees 



60 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

below zero. Belligerent Europe was using the world's 
supply of castor-oil, so, while our airplane-production 
program was getting under way, the government ar- 
ranged for great castor-bean plantations in Florida and 
Texas and for mills to express the oil from the beans. 
By the time we had the 'planes and engines ready 
there was oil aplenty for their lubrication. 



IV 



AMERICAN MILITARY AIRPLANES 

AS I have already indicated, there was in the United 
L States at the time of this country's entrance into 
the war almost no experience or practical knowledge 
of modern methods of airplane designing and con- 
struction. While European governments, for six 
years before the outbreak of the Great War in 19 14, 
had made huge annual appropriations for aircraft 
experimentation, the government of the United States 
had given so little encouragement to the development 
of this distinctive American invention that, even as 
late as the summer of 191 7, after this country had 
become a belligerent, we had no authoritative infor- 
mation, in the possession either of the government or 
of private individuals, upon which to base a determi- 
nation as to types and designs of 'planes that would 
be useful in war, nor plants equipped to build fighting 
airplanes and their essential accessories. Still less 
did we have either facilities for training aviators or 
competent instructors. 

Europe was still experimenting, it is true; with 
'planes as with a thousand other elements of military 
equipment, the effort to overcome Germany's tre- 
mendous initial advantage kept the resourcefulness of 
the Allies at all times strained to its utmost limit. 
But, although none of the Allied nations ever suc- 
ceeded in putting into service on the western front 



62 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

a 'plane as well designed for its purpose as the best 
of the German 'planes, the French and English had, 
by midsummer of 191 6, succeeded in taking control 
of the air away from the enemy by sheer force of 
numerical superiority in 'planes, and of better engines 
than the Germans had. And in the struggle to gain 
and hold air control there had been developed 'planes 
which, in design and construction, were superior in 
every detail to even the most advanced experimental 
machines that had ever been built in America. 

One American concern, the Curtiss Company at 
Buffalo, had been building training-'planes for the 
British and Canadian governments and a few flying- 
boats for the British navy before America's entrance 
into the war. There were not more than four or five 
other airplane manufacturers who had ever built as 
many as ten machines, and there were a dozen or 
more companies and individuals each of which had 
built from one to a half-dozen airplanes of different 
types, mostly for exhibition purposes. There our 
aircraft-manufacturing experience began and ended. 
There were probably a dozen men in America who 
had more or less experience in the designing of flying- 
machines, but none who even remotely comprehended 
the progress that had been made in Europe and was 
competent to design a complete fighting-machine. 
Not a single airplane had ever been built in the United 
States equipped to carry a machine-gun, nor was 
there an aircraft machine-gun being manufactured 
in America. These facts, which I have here briefly 
summarized, must be thoroughly understood if one 
is to realize even incompletely what a triumph of 
Yankee resourcefulness and ingenuity our actual 
achievement in airplane design, construction, and 
equipment really was. 



64 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

It was not until after General Pershing had arrived 
in France with the first detachments of the American 
Expeditionary Forces that a decision was arrived at 
even as to the main outlines of America's aviation 
program for the war. Seventeen months later, when 
the armistice was signed, there had been completed, 
equipped, and put into service by the United States 
11,804 military airplanes of all kinds, including 3,765 
combat- 'planes, of which 2,899 had been shipped 
overseas to the A. E. F. This does not take into 
account more than 4,000 'planes which we had bought 
from the French, in pursuance of the policy agreed 
upon between General Pershing and the Allied govern- 
ments immediately upon his arrival in France, that 
the United States should leave the production of 
single-seat fighters and pursuit-'planes to the French 
and British, who were by this time adequately 
equipped to produce these in quantities, and that 
we should concentrate our efforts, beyond the pro- 
duction of necessary training- 'planes for our own 
fighters, upon two-seated observation- 'planes and the 
larger and heavier type of bombing-machine. 

Between our state of total unpreparedness in avia- 
tion existing on June 1, 191 7, and the record of air- 
plane production up to November 11, 191 8, there lies 
the story of a stupendous battle against time and the 
limitations of men and materials. The mechanical 
miracles that had to be performed, the superhuman 
achievements for which men were daily called upon 
in the execution of our airplane program, were so 
terrific that, had they been foreseen, it is doubtful 
whether men could have been by any means per- 
suaded to undertake them. It was only our blissful 
ignorance of the magnitude of the obstacles to be 
overcome that made possible the adoption and accept- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



65 



ance of the 'plans which ultimately were successfully 
worked out. 

.1 do not propose to tell here the details of the exe- 
cution of the entire airplane program, romantic as 




America's standard fighting airplane 

Two views of the De Havilland-4, the two-seated observation- and combat-'plane 
manufactured in this country for use overseas. 



are many of the episodes of the conversion of fac- 
tories of every sort into aircraft plants, the creation 
almost overnight of a huge industry, the training of 
tens of thousands of workers in new arts and handi- 
crafts, and the reduction to standard shop practice 
of construction methods that had previously been 



66 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

individual and experimental. I'c-an touch only upon 
the distinctively American contributions to the science 
and art of military aviation that helped us to win 
the war. 

In the manufacture of the 'planes themselves we 
undertook no such radical and revolutionary departure 
from European practice as we did in the matter of 
motors; the Liberty motor stands as the one com- 
pletely American achievement of this sort. Our 
'plane program called merely for the duplication of 
types and designs already proved out in practice by 
the European Allies, with some adaptations to permit 
the use of the Liberty motor in place of the engines 
for which they had originally been designed. For the 
elementary training of our airmen we adopted the 
standard type of training- 'plane already being manu- 
factured by the Curtiss Company for the British. 
It was the original intention to use an English ma- 
chine — the Bristol biplane — for use as an advanced 
training- 'plane for our own aviators. The Bristol 
'plane was redesigned to take the twelve-cylinder 
Liberty motor. This turned out to be our most seri- 
ous and important failure, and after a number of men 
had been killed by the collapse of Bristol machines 
on their first trials, due to faulty engineering in the 
redesigning, this type of 'plane was abandoned and 
an improved type of Curtiss machine substituted for 
advanced training purposes. And for our standard 
combat-'plane, for observation and bombing, we copied 
as closely as possible the English De Havilland-4. 

In redesigning the De Havilland-4 to take the 
Liberty motor, our engineers were more successful 
than with the Bristol. American-built De Havil- 
land-4 's in service on the western front, and in use for 
advanced training of airmen in America, did all and 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



67 



more than was expected of them. The American De 
Havilland-4 is a two-seater observation biplane. It 
measures 42 feet 53/8 inches from tip to tip of the 
upper wings, and has an over-all length, fore and aft, 
of 29 feet 7 inches. Resting on the ground it measures 




THE AMERICAN CAPRONI NIGHT-BOMBING PLANE 

When the war ended we were beginning to build these huge machines of Italian 

design. 



10 feet 1 inch to the highest point of the upper wing. 
It has a total wing surface of 439 square feet, and its 
total weight, fully equipped and ready for flight, is 
3,868 pounds, or 8.8 pounds per square foot of wing 
surface. Equipped with the 400-horse-power Liberty 
motor, it has an officially recorded speed of 120 miles 
an hour at a height of 6,500 feet. In spite of the fact 
that it carries a heavier load per square foot of wing 
surface than any of the observation-'planes used by 
the Allies, the greater horse-power of the Liberty 
motor makes it the fastest of all the observation- 
'planes that were in service prior to the signing of the 



68 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

armistice. And to complete the statistical record of 
the American De Havilland-4, I note here that it 
can climb in eight minutes to a height of 6,500 feet, 
in fourteen minutes to the height of 10,000 feet, and 
in twenty-four minutes to the height of 15,000 feet; 
that its "ceiling," or limit of height to which it can 
fly, is approximately 20,000 feet or slightly under four 
miles. 

While classed as a combat-'plane, in that it is a 
machine used for active service at the front and not 
primarily and exclusively for training, the De Havil- 
land-4 is not one of the types of airplanes used by 
fighting fliers for the daredevil exploits that make the 
stories of aerial warfare read like pages from the ro- 
mances of chivalry. All of the airplanes of that class, 
the so-called scout and pursuit 'planes, used by Amer- 
ican airmen in the war, were the product of French 
manufacturers. But, spectacular as are such aerial 
combats, they are only incidental to the real purposes 
of military aviation which are, first, observation of 
the enemy's movements and positions, and, second, 
the dropping of bombs. The fast-flying, high-climbing 
single-seat fighting- 'planes have as their reason for 
existence merely the protection of the necessarily 
heavier observation and bombing 'planes. These 
heavier 'planes carry even more fighting equipment 
than do the single-seaters, but they are armed chiefly 
for defense. In another chapter I describe some of 
the "Yankee tricks" in the fighting and observation 
equipment of airplanes that in the last months of the 
war played a decisive part in bringing about the 
Allied victory. 

Early in the war airplanes were used by the Allies 
solely for observation purposes. As the war pro- 
gressed, and German raids upon hospitals and un- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 69 

fortified towns brought home to the Allies the full 
realization of the fact that they had to deal with a 
foe that had deliberately discarded every rule of 
civilized warfare, the use of aerial bombs against the 
Germans was sanctioned and, by the time the United 
States entered the war, bombing of the enemy's posi- 
tions both by day and night had become standard mil- 
itary practice. For bombing-'planes, also, we adopted 
European models, the De Havilland-o for day 
bombing, a machine differing only in minor details 
from the De Havilland-4 ; for night bombing we began 
the construction in this country of the Handley- 
Page, the largest of all military airplanes, and the 
Caproni, an Italian 'plane almost as large. At the 
signing of the armistice we had built and delivered 
to the A. E. F. one hundred of the great Handley- 
Page 'planes, measuring 100 feet across the wings, 
with an over-all length of 62 feet 10 inches and a 
height of 22 feet. These great 'planes, weighing more 
than 14,000 pounds, and with a wing surface of 1,642 
square feet, can carry nearly a ton of bombs in addi- 
tion to the crew of four men, and fly at a speed of 
eighty-two miles an hour. The Caproni is almost 
as powerful a machine, although of less wing spread. 
It flies at a higher speed than the Handley-Page, 
and carries approximately the same useful load of 
bombs. American-built Handley-Pages and Ca- 
pronies, the former equipped with two Liberty motors 
each, and the latter with three, rank among the note- 
worthy technical achievements of the American air- 
plane industry, so suddenly developed under war 
pressure from practically nothing at all. Airplanes 
of both these types, although built from European 
designs, made better records in the air in every respect 

than their exact prototypes produced on the other 
6 



7o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

side, so cleverly did their American builders apply 
the methods of construction that had been worked 
out in this country in the course of learning how to 
build flying craft. 

One of the most important details in which the 
later American airplanes excelled those of Europe was 
the adoption of the so-called "stream-line" wire for 
stays and guys instead of the round wires and cables 
that had always been used. The problem of air 
resistance has, from the beginning, been one of 
the most difficult for aircraft designers to solve. Be- 
fore the war began it had been discovered that the 
blunt-nosed, long, tapering body enabled a 'plane to 
make higher speed than the old-fashioned machines 
had been capable of. The principle is exactly that 
used in ship construction. Naval architects long 
ago learned that the more closely they could model 
their craft on the lines of a fast-swimming fish, like 
the mackerel, the less resistance there would be to 
their passage through the water. So every part of a 
modern airplane is designed to present, as far as pos- 
sible, only smooth surfaces to the air through which 
the machine passes, and to taper off in carefully cal- 
culated curves from front to rear ; for what slows down 
the flying craft is not so much the head resistance 
of the air as it is the friction of the air against the 
surfaces of the wings and body and the suction or 
"drag" caused by the partial vacuum created when 
the stern is tapered too abruptly. And just as one 
can tow a large boat through the water with much 
more ease than a comparatively small tub, so it was 
found that changing the shape of the exposed wires 
that hold the airplane wing structure together from 
a circular cross-section to the shape of a flattened 
ellipse made a material difference in the speed of the 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 71 

'plane. Tested on the De Havilland-4, the change 
from round wires to ' ' stream-line ' ' wires made a dif- 
ference of more than six miles an hour, and with the 
huge Handley-Page and Caproni bombing- 'planes 
the difference was even more marked. And when the 
war ended an American manufacturing concern had 
perfected a method of producing these "stream-line" 
wires so flat as to be almost ribbon-like, and yet as 
strong as the piano-wires and cables previously used, 
and costing little, if any, more. 

In the last few months of the war another type of 
observation-'plane, the Le Pere, was beginning to be 
made in America. This is of a French design, sim- 
ilar in its general appearance to the De Havilland-4 
but with many finer details of line and in its construc- 
tion. None of the Le Pere 'planes were in service 
when the war ended, although one had undergone 
official tests and proved to be faster than the De 
Havilland at all elevations, and able to climb more 
rapidly and higher, although weighing slightly more 
per square foot of wing surface. 

So far we have considered only the American pro- 
duction of European designs of airplanes, and only 
those made for the army. But while this plan of 
copying European designs seemed to be, and probably 
was, the only way that offered any hope of getting 
any adequate supply of American 'planes into the air 
on the western front in time to save the Allies from 
defeat, American inventive genius did not stop func- 
tioning with the adoption of this program, nor were 
the designers and builders of American types either 
asleep or entirely neglected. 

Just as the war was coming to a close a new type 
of fighting airplane, original and unique in design, 
and possessing many points of superiority over any 



72 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

machine then in use, was perfected by a young 
American engineer, Grover Cleveland Loening. The 
Loening machine, an observation- 'plane carrying two 
passengers, is at once the smallest and lightest, as 
well as the fastest, of all military airplanes so far pro- 
duced. The Loening machine is a monoplane, a 
return in this respect to the class of airplanes most 
highly favored by both the Germans and the Allies 
at the beginning of the war. Prior to 19 14 the French 
had developed the monoplane, a type of machine 
almost unknown in America. The famous German 
Taube 'planes, of which so much was heard early 
in the war, were monoplanes, and so were some of 
the first British scout-'planes. At the end of the war, 
however, there was not a single monoplane type in 
use by any of the Allies or the Germans. The aban- 
donment of the monoplane was due, not to any preju- 
dice in favor of the biplane, but because the latter 
could be more readily produced in large quantities 
by comparatively inexpert workmen, with less risk 
of imperfections that might prove fatal to the flier. 
Previous types of monoplanes, however, had been 
exclusively single-seat machines, with the pilot so 
located that his range of vision was greatly curtailed, 
making it very difficult for him to protect himself 
successfully from attack. In the Loening monoplane 
both of these difficulties are overcome. On its official 
test, under the observation of army authorities, the 
Loening 'plane achieved a ground speed of 143^ 
miles an hour, and at 6,500 feet elevation it made 
138.2 miles per hour with full military load. This 
compares with 135 miles an hour for the swiftest type 
of French ' ' Spad " and 131 miles an hour for the fastest 
of the British "Sopwith " biplanes. The only military 
'plane having an official record of a higher speed 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 73 

than this is the Italian "S.V.," with 142 miles an 
hour. 

The Loening monoplane has the wings attached to 
the top of the body, and they are cut away so that the 
pilot, who sits between them, has not only a clear 
view in every direction from the zenith to the horizon, 
but also downward and sideways over a very large 




THE FASTEST YANKEE MILITARY PLANE 
The Loening monoplane, America's answer to German superiority in 'plane design. 

arc on each side, while the observer's vision is almost 
entirely unobstructed in any direction. The Loen- 
ing 'plane has a wing-spread of 32 feet and 
weighs but 1,300 pounds without its military equip- 
ment and passengers. Fully equipped and ready to 
take the air with two passengers, it weighs 2,608 
pounds. In other words, this remarkable little ma- 
chine can carry a load equal to its own weight, whereas 
the average load-carrying capacity of all other air- 
planes is about half of the weight of the bare machine. 
The Loening monoplane, equipped with a 300-horse- 
power Hispano-Suiza engine, has an official record 
of 5 minutes 12 seconds for climbing to 6,500 feet; 
9 minutes 12 seconds to 10,000 feet, and 18 minutes 



74 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

24 seconds to 15,000 feet. In every sort of maneuver-, 
ing this machine, with two passengers, has equaled 
the best performance of the single-seat scout-'planes 
of the British and French. 

Its designer, Mr. Grover Cleveland Loening, was 
only thirty years old when this revolutionary airplane 
was accepted by the army. He had, nevertheless, 
had almost as long an experience in airplane design 
and construction as any one in the world, so new is the 
whole art of heavier-than-air flying. He had taken 
up aviation while a student at Columbia University, 
from which he was graduated in 191 1. The follow- 
ing year he built the first monoplane flying-boat. 
Then he became assistant to Orville Wright in the 
designing and manufacturing of airplanes, and in 
July, 1 9 14, was appointed chief aeronautical engineer 
of the United States army and stationed at the Signal 
Corps Field at San Diego, California, where he wrote 
his book, Military Airplanes, which has since become 
an official text-book at the aviation-schools of the 
American, British, and Canadian governments. He 
resigned from the government service to go into 
commercial-airplane manufacture, and in 191 7, after 
the United States had entered the war, he went to 
Europe and made a first-hand personal study of types 
of military airplanes then in use, as a result of which 
he brought out the machine which is quite generally 
regarded as being America's most important contri- 
bution, next to the invention of the airplane itself, to 
military aviation, and, with the possible exception of 
the German Fokker-7, the most formidable aerial 
fighting-machine ever devised. 

Tests of captured Fokker-7 's made in France and 
Belgium in the autumn of 1918, under the direction 
of Lieut. -Col. E. J. Hall, U.S.A. one of the designers 



! 



... __. 




SJmmteasit 


fcmi /CI 


^^^^H^j^^^^^Vj 







TEE AIRrLANE OF THE ACES 

The famous "Spaci" single-seater pursuit- 'plane, a French machine made for the 
American army under the arrangement for specializing aircraft production. 




THE D TYPE SEAPLANE 

This is the sort of flying craft carried on the deck of a war-ship for scouting purposes. 



76 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

of the Liberty motor, demonstrated that that 
machine, if adequately engined, was superior to the 
best of the Allied fighting aircraft in the essential 
elements of horizontal and climbing speed, ease and 
safety in maneuvering in the air, visibility from the 
pilot's seat, and comfortable riding qualities. 

While the program of airplane production which 
has just been reviewed was to some extent for the 
joint benefit of both the army and navy, and entirely 
so in so far as the Libert)'' motor is concerned, the 
Navy Department, and aircraft manufacturers work- 
ing under its direction, were developing seaplanes and 
flying-boats to a degree of perfection not before at- 
tained. Unlike the army, which depended entirely 
upon private contractors, the navy built its own air- 
craft-manufacturing plant at the League Island Navy 
Yard, Philadelphia. Authorized on July 7, 191 7, the 
plant, a permanent steel structure covering a ground 
area of 160,000 square feet, was built in three months 
at a cost of a million dollars. Three months later it 
had expanded itself to five times its original size, and, 
besides building seaplanes complete, the navy was 
having parts made to its own designs in hundreds of 
commercial plants throughout the country and as- 
sembling them at the League Island factory. The 
seaplane proper differs in no essential respect from 
the ordinary airplane, except that instead of rubber- 
tired wheels to enable it to run along the ground it 
is equipped with pontoons under the body and at- 
tached to the tips of the lower wings, so that it may 
light upon and arise from the water. High speed is 
not so important a factor in the seaplane as is en- 
durance; the Liberty motors used by the navy are 
geared down from their normal 1,800 revolutions 
a minute to about 1,400, reducing their power some- 




America's first giant seaplane 

The NCi, which carried 51 persons in flight, and which was sunk off the Azores 
while flying across the Atlantic. 




Official photo U. S. Naval Air Service 

THE FIRST AIRPLANE TO CROSS THE ATLANTIC 

The NC-4 ("NC" means " Navy-Curtiss ") as she started from Trepassey Bay, 
Newfoundland, for the Azores. 



7 8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

what, but greatly increasing the length of time they 
can remain in the air on the same supply of gasolene. 
By far the most spectacular and important phase 
of the navy's aviation program, however, was the 
development and perfection of the flying-boat. The 
flying-boat is as distinctly American as is the airplane 
itself. Instead of being merely an airplane equipped 
with pontoons, it is actually a boat fitted with wings. 
Glenn H. Curtiss, who made public flights in an air- 
plane even before the Wright Brothers, invented the 
flying-boat. Under the direction of the navy, the 
design of the flying-boat was perfected in 191 8, and 
just before the end of the war the first flights were 
made in the gigantic NC-i. This huge biplane meas- 
ures 126 feet across the wings, while the hull of the 
boat is more than 50 feet long. It is propelled by three 
Liberty motors, and on one of its first public flights 
carried fifty-one passengers, afterward making a suc- 
cessful flight to Rockaway Beach, Long Island, from 
Langley Field on Hampton Roads, an airline distance 
of approximately 300 miles, in 4 hours and 20 minutes. 
So successful were the experiments with this first great 
flying-boat that several others of the same type were 
immediately constructed, a fourth Liberty motor 
being added to the later models, in one of which, the 
NC-4, Lieutenant-Commander Read made the first 
flight across the Atlantic. 



V 

AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND AIRPLANE EQUIPMENT 

I HAVE indicated some of the difficulties that had 
to be overcome and the strain imposed upon the in- 
genuity and resourcefulness of American scientists, 
engineers, and manufacturers before we were able to 
produce the necessary airplanes and their engines, 
and establish their manufacture on a basis that would 
insure a sufficient and continuous supply. But all 
the airplanes and all the Liberty motors that we were 
finally able to turn out would have been useless for 
military purposes without a tremendous variety of 
equipment, with the design and manufacture of which 
we were even less familiar than we were with the 
designing and manufacture of 'planes and engines 
themselves. 

There had never been built in America an airplane 
carrying a machine-gun; the instruments with which 
our 'planes were equipped were of the simplest pos- 
sible nature, for determining altitude and direction. 
We had first to learn what devices had been found 
useful by the European Allies for the military equip- 
ment of airplanes, then to devise ways and means of 
making these or improving upon them, and then 
undertake their manufacture. When we finally sent 
completely equipped De Havilland-4's to France, 
they carried instruments and equipment which in 
almost every item and detail represented scientific 



8o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

and technical advances over anything that had been 
produced in Europe. In the eighteen months in 
which the United States was actually a belligerent 
we had invented in this country and begun to manu- 
facture many totally new devices, without which no 
airplane is now regarded as completely equipped, and 
had introduced striking improvements on apparatus 
previously in use. 

The equipment of a military airplane, apart from 
the propelling mechanism, falls into five classes. 
There are, first, the instruments and apparatus nec- 
essary for the most successful operation and guidance 
of the aircraft itself; then there are the devices requi- 
site for the comfort and safety of the pilot and ob- 
server in flight; apparatus for signaling and com- 
munication must be provided; there is then the 
special equipment for observation. And all of these 
would be of little avail were the machine not also 
equipped with weapons of offense and of defense 
against the efforts of the enemy to bring it down. In 
addition to all of these five classes of equipment, the 
heavy bombing-'planes carry a sixth, the mechanism 
for dropping bombs, which was the latest of all 
developments in aerial warfare. 

The primary purpose of aircraft in war is as a means 
of observation of the enemy's positions. For every 
phase of aerial warfare, except that of bomb-dropping, 
is secondary to the function of aircraft as a means of 
ascertaining the enemy's whereabouts and movements. 
Spectacular and thrilling as are the stories of the ex- 
ploits of the famous "aces," the modern knights- 
errant, whose single-handed combats are reminiscent 
of the days of chivalry, these aerial duels have no 
military value or purpose except that of protecting 
the observation- 'planes and balloons from attack by 




AIRPLANE MAP OF WASHINGTON, D. C. 

Composed of hundreds of aerial photographs matched and pieced together 



82 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the enemy and preventing the enemy's observers 
from obtaining the information they are seeking. 
The amount of damage that can be inflicted upon 
the enemy by means of airplanes, other than by drop- 
ping bombs, is so trifling that the risk and cost would 
not justify their use for fighting purposes alone. 

Very early in the war the Allies found that the 
best results from the use of the airplane for observa- 
tion could be obtained by means of photography. 
Here, as in almost every other field of applied science, 
Germany had a distinct advantage at the beginning 
of the war. Germany had developed photographic 
apparatus especially for airplane use; the aerial ob- 
servers of the Allies had to compete, in the beginning, 
with short-range, portable hand cameras. Germany 
had trained hundreds of men in the new art of reading 
aerial photographs; the Allies had to learn it all after 
they got into the war. But here, as in other fields, 
Germany made the mistake of supposing that because 
her enemies had not prepared themselves in these 
directions they were unable to do these things. When 
the Allies, and especially when the United States 
took up seriously the development of aerial photog- 
raphy, it was carried so much farther and developed 
to such a higher pitch of perfection than anything 
Germany had dreamed of that no Prussian camou- 
flage could hide the Huns' movements from us in the 
latter days of the war; hardly could clouds, even, pre- 
vent the photographing of every detail of the enemy's 
positions, while our observers remained themselves 
unseen from the ground! 

Beyond a doubt, Germany relied upon her practical 
monopoly of the optical-glass industry to keep the 
nations opposing her in the field from being equipped 
with high-grade lenses for photography, for range- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 83 

finders, and for field-glasses, necessary to war, on any- 
large scale. For nearly a quarter of a century the 
manufacture of the best grades of glass for these pur- 
poses had centered at Jena, in Prussia ; many grades 
essential to the manufacture of modern high-speed 
lenses were not made anywhere else in the world. 
The University of Jena had established great labora- 
tories for research in glass-making and lens develop- 
ment, and the German government had subsidized 
extensive manufacturing plants which made the pho- 
tographic and other lenses for the whole world. 

By the end of 19 14 the importation of optical glass 
had become difficult and uncertain. One American 
firm had begun some experiments, others established 
laboratories, and the Bureau of Standards of the 
United States Department of Commerce set some of 
its scientists to work on the problem. Glass that 
answered one important purpose of Jena glass, that 
of material for test-tubes and other laboratory ap- 
paratus, was soon developed and has proved so much 
better than anything Germany ever made that there is 
no possible chance of any future German competition. 
Great Britain succeeded in getting good production 
of some grades of glass that gave acceptable results 
when ground into camera lenses, but by 191 7, when 
the United States entered the war, the optical-glass 
situation had become critical. Such as France and 
Great Britain were able to produce was inadequate 
for even their needs; if we were to take an effective 
part in the war it was imperative that we make our 
own glass. 

Of all American institutions there is none that is so 
distinctly and exclusively devoted to the pursuit of 
pure science as the Carnegie Institution of Washing- 
ton. When its scientists were called upon for aid 



8 4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

they responded with enthusiasm. A party of scien- 
tists from the Geophysical Laboratory of the Car- 
negie Institution was sent to Rochester, the center 
of photographic lens grinding in America, and for 
seven months from April, 191 7, all of the energies of 
the laboratory were centered at this point, while the 
Bureau of Standards pursued its researches. By the 
end of 1 91 7 the last German secret had been disclosed 
and the manufacture of glass comparing with that of 
Jena for every purpose was under way on a com- 
mercial basis in America. Glass manufacturers in 
other cities were enlisted, and to-day it may fairly 
be said that there is nothing the Germans have ever 
done in the manufacture of photographic lenses that 
we are not doing in America, and there are some 
distinct advances over German practice which are 
now standardized commercial practice here. 

Wonderful as are the German lenses, composed of 
glass of three or four different qualities and consist- 
encies, to give the greatest possible light-gathering 
power, they have seldom been produced in the larger 
sizes without flaws in the glass, which, the German 
herr professors solemnly assured us, did not really 
impair the excellence of the lenses. We are making 
the largest lenses without flaws, and find they work 
faster than those with flaws in them, strange as that 
may seem — to the Germans. And never again will 
America and the rest of the world be dependent upon 
Germany for lenses; that chain has been snapped 
forever ! 

America's need for lenses in the war was not con- 
fined to photographic requirements; for range-finders 
for our artillery and for the navy, for field-glasses and 
optical instruments of every sort, the discoveries and 
inventions developed by our scientists made it pos- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



85 



sible to provide equipment in these lines without 
which we would have been seriously handicapped. 

Learning how to make lenses was only one step 
in the application of scientific knowledge and methods 
of photography that 
was such an impor- 
tant development of 
the war. In the be- 
ginning of the war 
photographic observ- 
ers could fly at low 
altitudes; before hos- 
tilities ceased it was 
a foolhardy photog- 
rapher who tried to 
take pictures from 
less than a mile high, 
while two or three 
miles was a much 
safer altitude. This 
made a hand camera 
useless, and huge de- 
vices permanently 
attached to the air- 
plane, equipped with 
lenses larger than had 
ever been used for 
such purposes, had 
to be devised. The 

ordinary view-camera has a "focal length," or dis- 
tance between the focal center of the lens and the 
plate, of from seven to ten or twelve inches; lenses 
ordinarily in use having a longer focal length are 
small, having a working diameter of from one-eighth 
to one-fifteenth of the focal length, requiring long 




BIGGEST OF AERIAL CAMERAS 

This huge apparatus, with a ten-inch lens of 

fifty inches focus, makes clear photographs of 

people on the ground from a height of three 

miles or more. 



86 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

exposures. But before the armistice was signed we 
had made in this country perfect lenses having a 
focal length of fifty inches and having a diameter of 
ten inches — what photographers term "an aperture 
of F. 5." 

Equipped with a camera of this enormous size, 
the lens protruding through the bottom of the fuselage 
of his airplane, the aerial observer can fly at a height 
of three miles or more and with an exposure of a 
five-hundredth of a second, or even less, make a 
picture of the ground beneath so full of detail that the 
trained experts at the laboratory behind his own lines 
can detect even the footprints that show where men 
had marched over the damp earth the night before. 
From this mechanical eye nothing is hidden; even 
objects that the airman himself cannot see are brought 
out in full detail by these huge lenses, while the color 
values that make it possible to differentiate even 
between two varieties of evergreen-trees by a study 
of photographs taken from the sky are accentuated 
by two other remarkable photographic developments 
of the war, the pan-chromatic plate and the new 
ray-filter. Heretofore the combination of high-speed 
photography with accurate color values has been re- 
garded as impossible; it is literally true that with 
the new "emulsion," as the chemical coating of the 
negative plate is called, photographs can be made 
under light conditions heretofore impossible, at speeds 
almost as high as were formerly possible in full sun- 
light. And instead of being merely solid blacks and 
whites, as is usually the case with under-exposed 
pictures, these photographs contain a wide range of 
gradations that make the distinction between objects 
of the same shape but of different materials so easy 
as to be almost miraculous. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



87 



Proper rendition of color value is aided by ray- 
filters devised by American university professors 
working as army officers. One of these devices, in 
addition, enables the aviator to perform the marvelous 
trick of photographing through a cloud or haze that 




THE AUTOMATIC AERIAL CAMERA 

The photographer is telling the pilot, over the wireless interphone, just where to 
fly to get the picture he wants. 



completely obscures his vision of the earth and getting 
a picture that shows the details of the surface. 
Through a haze that is hardly thick enough to be 
called cloud, but which makes ordinary long-distance 
vision impossible, such photographs are as easy as 
though the atmosphere were perfectly clear; through 
thin clouds, almost, if not quite, thick enough to 
hide the airmen from observers on the ground, photo- 
graphs have also been made. 

Developing negatives and making prints from them 
was formerly a comparatively slow process; few 



88 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

photographers, even the fast- working professionals of 
the newspaper staffs, knew any tricks that would 
speed up the process to an elapsed time of much less 
than twenty minutes. Through purely scientific 
methods, devised by experts who had never had prac- 
tical experience in high-speed photographic work, but 
who were completely equipped chemists, ways have 
been found to develop the negative and produce not 
only one, but a number of finished prints in less than 
ten minutes; a quarter of an hour after the aerial 
observer has landed, expert photograph-readers are 
transferring to maps the new data which his photo- 
graphs reveal, five minutes later the commanding 
officers of the entire sector know the enemy's latest 
movements miles behind the lines. 

More than one hundred thousand prints of aerial 
photographs had to be turned out in four days by 
the aerial photographic force of the Air Service during 
the September, 1918, offensive west of Verdun and 
in the Argonne region. The aerial negatives had 
originally been made by French squadrons operating 
over the sector, but the production of prints on the 
large scale necessary had been left to the American 
service. As the offensive was in the nature of a sur- 
prise, all the preparatory work, especially the bringing 
up of American air squadrons, had to be concealed 
up to the last minute. 

The American photographic force was brought to- 
gether and traveled all night to headquarters, arriving 
at 9 a.m. By ten o'clock a laboratory had been im- 
provised in the shed of a brewery, and the printing 
was actually in progress. During the first night, with 
most limited facilities, 3,000 prints were made, and 
later a record of 9,000 prints in sixteen hours for a 
single photographic section was established. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



89 



During the offensive the advance of the troops was 
so rapid that nearly all the 'planes and observers were 
occupied in making visual observations and regulat- 
ing artillery fire. Aerial photographs, however, were 




HOW AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY AIDS THE MAP-MAKER 

On the left is the picture ot a quartermaster's depot made up of a number of air- 
plane photos; on the right, the topographical drawing made from these data. 



made by the American forces of the results of heavy 
artillery fire, and proved very valuable. A photo- 
graphic mission also was sent out along the Meuse 
to ascertain if reports were correct that all the 
bridges were down. The results were so good that 
the exact number of troops, trucks, and even machine- 
gun companies in movement at that hour was ascer- 
tained. 

The development of the aerial camera into a maga- 
zine carrying fifty plates was followed by an auto- 
matic plate-changing device that made the observer's 
task the mere pressing of a button. On America's 
entry into the war the adaptation of the flexible 
photographic film to the aerial camera began. The 



90 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

film is America's most important and distinctive con- 
tribution to the art of photography. It had been re- 
jected by the professional photographer because of 
the difficulty in making it lie flat and the way it 
has of "fogging" because of frictional electrical 
discharges as it is rolled from one spool to another 
in very cold weather — and it is always very cold 
weather at three miles up in the air! 

Again science overcame obstacles. Films in rolls 
twenty inches wide and containing enough for one 
hundred exposures of 15x20 inches are made to lie 
flat in the latest American aerial camera by passing 
the part of the film to be exposed under a plate pierced 
with hundreds of tiny holes through which air is ex- 
hausted, thus holding the film flat against the plate; 
the suction is accomplished by means of a Venturi 
tube attached to the frame of the machine, the wind 
caused by the machine's motion providing sufficient 
pressure. This simple and efficacious scheme was 
the invention of one college professor ; another worked 
out the scheme for preventing electrical fogging by 
covering every metal part over which the film passes 
with cloth, the threads and meshes of which are filled 
with graphite, reducing friction to practically nothing. 
This same camera is entirely automatic in its action. 
The observer needs only to pull a trigger, and so long 
as he holds it down the camera will take one photo- 
graph after another at a rate dependent upon the 
speed at which he is flying. These photographs, 
placed edge to edge, or with a slight overlap, give a 
perfect map of the terrain traversed. 

With the combination of powerful lenses that take 
in every detail at high speed, ray -filters and pan-chro- 
matic plates that distinguish and record color values, 
and the automatic device that shifts the film at regu- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 91 

lar intervals, it is now possible to make in a few 
minutes a map that would have taken surveyors 
years to make. There are sections of the United 
States, many of them huge areas like the desert and 
mountain country of the Southwest, that have never 
been explored nor surveyed. It is now possible to map 
them easily and with mathematical accuracy, only 
a moderate amount of triangulation to determine 
relative elevations being necessary. Where the coun- 
try is level or with a few elevations there is practically 
nothing left for old-fashioned surveying methods to 
accomplish. 

The photographic section of the Air Service in the 
autumn of 19 18 made a photographic map in and 
around Fort Sill, Oklahoma. This map shows not 
only highways, lanes, trees, buildings, railroads, 
fences, and every landmark, but indicates every ele- 
vation and depression in the terrain. With over 
four thousand separate prints pasted into one huge 
mosaic, the finished product covers a space 16 
feet long and 6 feet wide, representing a ground 
area of 310 square miles. The map takes as its 
center point the town of Lawton, which lies three 
miles south of Post Field, extending from this point 
east and west three and five miles, respectively, and 
from the northern boundary of Fort Sill reservation, 
thirty-one miles south to a point below the town of 
Walters. 

When work was started on this map, the territory 
was plotted out on a ground map, and by figuring the 
exact area possible to cover with three magazines of 
plates, allowing for the proper overlaps, zones or 
strips of country were established to be covered on 
every aerial flight. Observers were sent up with 
assignments to cover specified zones or strips, and as 



92 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

fast as the finished negatives showed that these strips 
had been covered satisfactorily the work proceeded 
to unfinished zones. Three 'planes went up daily 
at the start and negatives were produced with great 
rapidity. More than 4,200 separate exposures were 
made. Approximately sixty trips, averaging an hour 
and a half per trip, were necessary to produce the map, 
or a total flying-time of ninety hours. 

The most remarkable photographic map, however, 
is that of the city of Washington, D. C. This map, 
composed of 300 photographs placed together, was 
made in two hours and a half; it has been calculated 
that a corps of one hundred surveyors would take 
five years to do the same piece of work, and the re- 
sults would not be so accurate! Every bush in the 
parks is shown, the shape of every building, every 
alley and thoroughfare, while the black shadow of 
the Washington Monument, with its known 555 feet 
of height, gives a key from which every other eleva- 
tion can be calculated by the length of the photo- 
graphed shadow. 

Here is a contribution to peace-time activities and 
interests of vast importance; accurate, detailed maps 
of cities, such as can be made in this manner at small 
expense, now cost hundreds of dollars a copy; millions 
of government money may be saved by using this 
method to map the public domain; its usefulness in 
the oil-fields, in surveying timber-lands, and in a 
thousand ways that need no further elaboration is 
obvious. 

For the more accurate determination of elevations 
the stereoscopic principle is applied to aerial photog- 
raphy. Every one is familiar with the stereoscope, 
the device that enables one to look at a photograph — 
or, rather, two photographs — through simple prism 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 93 

lenses and, instead of seeing the picture in a fiat 
plane, get the effect of viewing the actual object, 
which appears to stand out in relief. This is accom- 
plished by taking two photographs simultaneously 
with the two lenses set at the distance from each 




THE MARLIN AIRCRAFT MACHINE-GUN 

This weapon is fixed to the fuselage, so the pilot has to aim his whole machine. 

He sights through the telescope with rubber-padded eye-piece, attached to the 

left of the gun. By a hydraulic transmission from the engine, the gun fires at the 

exact instant when the bullet will pass between the whirling propeller blades. 



other of the average human eyes — about three inches ; 
by means of the prisms the two pictures are seen as 
one and the effect of depth results. In aerial stereo- 
scopic photography the two pictures may be taken a 
couple of miles apart; the airman sets his camera at 
an angle and makes an oblique picture as he ap- 
proaches his object; then he turns and photographs 
it at the same angle from the opposite side. When the 
two pictures are viewed together the precise height 



94 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

of every elevation and the depth of every depression 
are determined accurately. 

To send an aerial observer aloft in the face of the 
enemy, no matter how perfect his airplane and his 
photographic equipment, without providing him with 
weapons of attack and defense and training him in 
the use of them, would, of course, be merely condemn- 
ing him to death without a chance for his life. In 
addition to the photographic equipment, therefore, 
each of our observation-'planes has four machine- 
guns, all of them American inventions. The two 
forward guns on a De Havilland-4 are Marlin guns. 
These are fixed guns; that is to say, they are rigidly 
attached to the airplane so that they can be aimed 
only by aiming the 'plane itself. And since these guns 
point directly forward and the propeller of the air- 
plane is at the forward end, these fixed machine-guns 
can be fired only at the instant when neither of the 
blades of the propeller is in the line of fire. 

There has been no more marvelous, yet simple, 
combination of mechanical devices invented for war 
purposes than the apparatus and method of firing 
fixed machine-guns from an airplane automatically, 
and so synchronizing their discharge with the revolu- 
tions of the propeller that the bullets will never hit 
the propeller blades, but always pass between them. 
How exacting the timing must be to accomplish this 
result must be obvious when one considers that the 
propeller shaft on a De Havilland 'plane equipped 
with the Liberty motor revolves at the rate of 1,800 
revolutions per minute. One or the other of the two 
propeller blades, therefore, passes in front of the gun 
sixty times a second, and in the trifling fraction of 
time between the passage of one blade and that of 
the other the bullet must clear the space. Otherwise, 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 



95 



the pilot would "shoot up" his own propeller and 
come crashing to earth. 

To solve the problem of synchronizing the Marlin 
gun required the most careful and painstaking cal- 
culations and the construction of apparatus which 




THE GUN THAT SHOOTS BOTH WAYS 

The problem of using weapons larger than machine-guns on aircraft is how to 
absorb the recoil without carrying too much weight. The Davis gun, shown in 
photograph, fires a one-pound naval shell. At the same time a charge of fine 
birdshot of the same weight is fired over the gunner's shoulder, through the other 
end of the gun. The two explosions offset each other and the airplane is not even 

jarred. 



would, under all circumstances, be absolutely reliable 
and at the same time add as little as possible to the 
weight which the 'plane must carry in the air and be 
capable of adjustments as delicate as those of a high- 
grade watch. Since the firing of these fixed guns 
must always depend upon the rate of speed of the 
propeller, regardless of whether the plane is traveling 



96 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

fast or slowly, the trigger mechanism had to be con- 
nected with the crank-shaft of the engine. No merely 
mechanical connection would answer, for even the 
slightest wear in a bearing or the infinitesimal stretch- 
ing of a chain or wire might pull the trigger prema- 
turely and send the bullet through the propeller in- 
stead of between its blades. So recourse was had to 
what is known to engineers as the most efficient and 
reliable means of transmitting power — the hydraulic 
method. Attached to the main shaft of the engine 
is a tiny rotary oil-pump, completely inclosed, open- 
ing only into a metal tube, filled with oil, which leads 
to the trigger mechanism of the gun. This pump 
makes a stroke at every revolution of the shaft and 
this pump-stroke is communicated through the oil 
in the tube to the trigger of the gun. The pilot has 
under his control, so placed that he can operate it 
with either his hand or his foot, the trigger release, 
which controls the firing of the fixed gun. When 
this trigger release is pressed, the gun automatically 
fires continuously, one bullet for every revolution of 
the propeller shaft, so long as there are cartridges in 
reserve. When the pilot relaxes his pressure on the 
trigger release, the firing ceases. He can fire one shot 
or a "burst" of shots, or fire continuously up to 
ioo rounds, which is the capacity of a single belt of 
cartridges. 

It was with fixed guns of this sort, synchronized to 
fire through the propellers, that most of the great 
air duels of the war were fought. For single-seat pur- 
suit-'planes, this type of gun had been adopted by all 
of the Allies in the last year of the war. There were 
many delicate mechanical problems besides the syn- 
chronizing involved in equipping our airplanes with 
the fixed machine-guns. To find a way of discharging 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 97 

the empty shells overside without hitting the pilot 
or the observer in the after cockpit as they swept 
through the air at 135 miles an hour involved careful 
study, experiment, and calculation. The disintegrat- 
ing belt for feeding the cartridges into the machine- 
gun was another Yankee device that proved highly 




THE LEWIS AIRCRAFT MACHINE-GUN 

This weapon is used by the observer in the rear cockpit of a two-plane machine. 

He has a pair of them and both can be fired at once. The cartridges are in the 

circular magazine; the bag catches the empty shells. 

efficient. The links of this belt are so hooked together 
that when filled with cartridges, one cartridge to a 
link, it remains a continuous belt or chain; after the 
cartridge has been fed into the gun, however, the 
link is automatically disconnected and drops out of 
the way, so that there are no unnecessary coils of 
chain to impede the pilot's movements and interfere 
with the guiding of the 'plane. 

The machine-gun equipment of the observer, whose 
post is in the cockpit behind that occupied by the 
pilot, consists of two Lewis machine-guns. This 



98 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

weapon, invented by Brig.-Gen. Isaac N. Lewis, U.S.A., 
is the only machine-gun that does not require a 
belt or web of cartridges. The Lewis gun magazine 
is a cylinder revolving horizontally about a vertical 
axis. Like other machine-guns, the cartridges are 
loaded into the barrel and fired by the force of the 
recoil. While the operator keeps his finger on the 
trigger the gun will continue to load and fire auto- 
matically so long as there are cartridges in the con- 
tainer. The Lewis gun, which had been adopted be- 
fore we went into the war by the United States navy 
and the British army, but not by our army, had a con- 
tainer capacity of forty-seven rounds. For aircraft pur- 
poses this container and the gun itself were redesigned, 
giving it a capacity of ninety-seven rounds. By an in- 
genious method, the two Lewis guns are mounted so that 
the observer can aim either or both of them at will in 
any direction, from straight up to almost straight down 
and around a horizon range of nearly 300 degrees. 
Both guns may be fired with a single trigger. Both 
the Lewis aircraft gun and the Marlin aircraft gun 
had to be provided with ammunition of special type. 
The ordinary infantry cartridge is not enough for 
aerial fighting. There must be provided armor- 
piercing incendiary bullets, since one of the surest 
methods of bringing down the enemy's 'plane is to 
pierce his gas-tank and set the contents on fire, but 
also so-called "tracer" bullets, missiles which leave 
a trail of smoke behind them as they pass through the 
air, thus enabling the man at the gun to observe the 
accuracy of his own aim. There were devised methods 
of loading the cartridge-belts and containers for air- 
craft machine-guns so that at fixed intervals between 
the shots of ordinary bullets tracer bullets would be 
fired, and at other fixed intervals the armor-piercing 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 99 

incendiary bullets. And there is a basis for legitimate 
pride in the achievement of the Yankee engineers 
and manufacturers who, between our declaration of 
war and the signing of the armistice, had perfected 
these machine-guns and their accessories and actually 




THE BROWNING AIRCRAFT MACHINE RIFLE 

One or two machine-guns are mounted on the flexible mount for the use of the 
observer in a two-seated 'plane. 



manufactured and shipped in less than twelve months 
30,000 of the Lewis guns and 25,000 of the Marlih 
fixed-type machine-guns. 

Equipped with guns of such flexibility, precision, 
and power, a pilot and observer in a De Havilland-4 
could go aloft to take photographs of the enemy's 
works with reasonable security, provided they had 
learned how to shoot. For the training of aviators in 
the use of the machine-guns of both types, character- 
istically American methods were devised and adopted. 



ioo YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

For practice in accurate aiming at moving targets, 
the popular sport of clay -pigeon shooting was adopted 
for the beginners at the aviation camps. Miniature 
model airplanes, towed through the air at the end of 
a long string attached to the 'plane, were fired at with 
machine-guns placed on top of elevated towers. But 
neither of these methods exactly simulated actual 
aerial combat. 

It would obviously be wasteful of both 'planes and 
aviators to have the men in training actually shooting 
at each other in the air, but by means of the photo- 
graphic gun a way was found in which all the condi- 
tions of war in the air, except the actual discharge of 
bullets, could be precisely simulated, and, moreover, 
an exact record of the results of each student's marks- 
manship be made. 

The first gun-camera was used by British aviators. 
Upon our entrance into the war the Eastman Kodak 
Company, at whose laboratories in Rochester most 
of the war-time advances in photograph technic 
and apparatus were perfected, set about improving 
the photo-gun. The British model, which was a long, 
heavy, cumbersome device that had to be especially 
mounted in the 'plane, was entirely discarded. In- 
stead there was devised a camera that could be fas- 
tened to the actual Lewis gun, so that in "shooting" 
with it the aviator was handling precisely the identical 
weapon he would use in real warfare. 

This camera-gun weighs 13 pounds and has a lens 
barrel 8 inches long and 2}4 inches in diameter. The 
magazine of film which it carries is designed to fit in 
place of the cartridge magazine on the Lewis gun, and 
contains film for 100 exposures. Ordinary motion- 
picture film is used. By means of a spring, wound up 
like the spring of a phonograph motor, power is ob- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 101 

tained for actuating the film-moving device so that as 
long as the operator keeps his finger on the trigger 
the photo-gun continues to "shoot," just as the 
machine-gun continues to shoot so long as the trigger 



BJ 




*** ■ ^^ 





* , .-Si 





SHOOTING WITH PHOTO-GUN 




A STRIP OF PHOTOGRAPH MADE WITH THE PHOTO-GUN, SHOWING THE 
OPERATOR HAD "GOT THE DROP" ON THE OTHER 'PLANE 



is held down. The same sights by which the machine- 
gun is aimed serve for aiming the photo-gun. Equipped 
with this weapon, the airman shoots at another 
machine in the air and the circular photographs on 
the strip of film show exactly the position of the other 



102 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

'plane and determine at once whether or not he would 
have hit it in a vital spot had he been firing bullets 
instead of taking snapshots. Later there was added 
to the photo-gun an ingenious timing mechanism, 
consisting of a split-second stop-watch, so placed that 
its dial was reflected into the camera, so that e very- 
photograph made with the photo-gun carried also a 
record of the exact fractional part of a second of time 
when the picture was made. Two student aviators 
so equipped, sent into the air for a mock aerial duel, 
brought back photographic records which showed 
exactly which one "got the drop" on the other, and 
whether one would have been disabled in actual war- 
fare before he could have inflicted vital injuries upon 
the other. 

For the efficient operation of airplanes flying at 
the previously unheard-of heights and speeds made 
necessary by war conditions, instruments of greater 
delicacy and perfection than had ever before been 
made in quantities had to be devised and manufact- 
ured for our aerial forces. The four most important 
items of information which the pilot must have con- 
stantly at hand are his altitude, the direction in which 
he is flying, the speed at which his 'plane is traveling 
through the air, and the number of revolutions per 
minute that his engine is making. Each of these re- 
quires a separate mechanism and a separate recording 
device on the instrument board in front of each pilot 
and observer. The air-speed indicator is a device as 
delicate as a watch. By means of a Venturi tube, 
through which the air passes, an indicator is moved 
on a dial set in the instrument board. While the air- 
man has no means of determining wind velocity, and 
therefore cannot calculate his speed with relation to 
the ground, he can always tell exactly how fast he 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 103 

is traveling with relation to the air; thus, if his air- 
speed indicator registers 125 miles an hour, and he 
is traveling before a fifty-mile wind, he is actually- 
going 175 miles an hour with relation to the earth; 
if he is flying against a fifty-mile wind, he is actually 




HOW AN AIRPLANE LOOKS WHEN SEEN THROUGH THE SIGHTS OF A 
MACHINE-GUN 

covering only 75 miles of distance per hour. To test 
these air-speed indicators by placing each one of the 
nearly ten thousand which we turned out before the 
war ended upon an airplane would have involved 
an immense number of experimental flights. Recourse 
was had to the wind-tunnel, the ingenious device in- 
vented by the late Wilbur Wright, and perfected under 
the direction of Glenn H. Curtiss. Originally designed 
for testing airplane models, this wind-tunnel, in which 
an air velocity as high as 200 miles an hour can be 



io 4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

obtained, served admirably for the calibrating of the 
air-speed indicators. 

How the General Electric Company in eight weeks 
from the beginning of operations was producing 250 
airplane compasses a week and made more than 11,000 
in the few months; how the tiny chains for 21,000 
aneroid barometers which serve as altimeters for de- 
termining the height above ground by means of air 
pressure were obtained from Switzerland; how the 
National Cash Register Company developed the 
tachometer, the device that records the engine speed, 
and made 21,000 of these devices — about each one 
of these remarkable industrial achievements a whole 
chapter might be written. Then for each 'plane there 
had to be provided two clocks, a radiator thermometer, 
and a fire-extinguisher, oil-pressure and air-pressure 
gages for the oil- and gasolene-tanks; the problem 
was not only how to make and produce these devices 
in quantities, but even the manufacture of the self- 
luminous radium dials for all of these instruments, 
making it possible for the airman to fly at night, 
involved difficulties that only the utmost resourceful- 
ness was able to overcome. 

And still the equipment of the military airplane 
was incomplete. Flying at terrific altitudes, some- 
times for hours at a time at a height of between three 
and four miles, airmen are exposed, even in mid- 
summer, to temperatures below the zero mark, and at 
the same time are required to exert themselves in an 
atmosphere so rarefied as to make breathing difficult. 
Anybody who has ever crossed the Great Divide 
knows what it means to climb in a day from the 
altitude of the plains, perhaps six or seven hundred 
feet above sea-level, to that of Denver or the higher 
passes farther west, from a mile to a mile and a half 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 105 

high. Few persons cross the Rocky Mountains with- 
out experiencing difficulty in breathing, even though 
the ascent has been slow and gradual. To climb in 
an hour from the earth to a height of three miles 
subjects the airman to strains which few endure for 
a long period successfully. Many of the fatalities in 
the early days of the war are now attributed to dizzi- 
ness and loss of control caused by the lack of oxygen 
in the air at these high altitudes, and one of the most 
important contributions of America to the whole 
aviation problem was the development and perfec- 
tion, under the direction of Brig. -Gen. T. C. Lyster, 
of the medical section of the Department of Military 
Aeronautics, of apparatus to insure a sufficient supply 
of oxygen to aviators at whatever altitude that they 
might fly. 

The great necessity of efficiently maintaining fliers 
was demonstrated by a study of the English air casu- 
alties during the first year of the war. This study 
indicated that 2 per cent, of casualties were due to 
the Hun, 8 per cent, to the 'plane, and 90 per 
cent, to the men; these proportions clearly indicated 
that something was radically wrong with the person- 
nel. A thorough study of this situation disclosed 
the fact that practically all of the flying personnel 
was suffering from what was known as oxygen fatigue. 

To design an oxygen equipment which would be 
entirely automatic, one that would be reliable and 
efficient, necessitated the building of a device which 
embodied several instruments and one that would 
overcome many variable conditions. It was necessary 
to have a device that would work under variable 
tank pressures, from 100 pounds to 250 pounds per 
square inch, with a temperature of from 70 to 80 
degrees Fahrenheit to 20 or 30 degrees below zero. 



106 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

To overcome these variables necessitated a thorough 
study of temperature and pressure effects upon metals, 
and considerable experiment. In addition, the ap- 
paratus must deliver the required quantity to either 
one or two men at every altitude from 3,000 to 30,000 
feet. 

Both the British and French had been experiment- 
ing with oxygen apparatus for aviators before the 
United States entered the war. An original model 
of the French apparatus was brought to this country. 
On inspection, it proved to be a hand-made device, 
each part having been carefully fitted by an individual 
workman. We had neither the skilled mechanics for 
this sort of work nor the time in which to make the 
large quantity of this equipment required for our air 
forces. The development and engineering of an 
oxygen apparatus to meet American requirements 
and to be manufactured by American methods were 
undertaken. 

The entire apparatus had to be redesigned, to take 
care of two men instead of one, to reduce the weight, 
to meet American methods of manufacture, and to 
make the apparatus more efficient and reliable. This 
work was started about the 1st of January, 191 8. 
On May 3, 191 8, six complete equipments, including 
apparatus, tanks, masks, etc., were sent overseas by 
special messenger to be actually tried out on the 
front. On May 31st the first production shipment of 
200 sets of apparatus was made. By November more 
than 5,000 sets of apparatus had been manufactured 
and accepted by the government, more than 3,600 
had been shipped to ports of embarkation, and more 
than 2,300 had been floated overseas, this production 
ranging from a rate of about 400 per month in May 
to 1,000 per month in October. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 107 

The importance of oxygen equipment necessitated 
the establishment overseas of a special oxygen equip- 
ment division, to take care of the application of these 
equipments to 'planes. All military 'planes flying above 
an altitude of 10,000 feet are equipped for the appli- 
cation of oxygen equipment. 

The intense cold at the high altitudes was a prob- 
lem that had to be solved in a different way. Fortu- 
nately we had in America developed a considerable 
industry in the manufacture of electrically heated 
pads, blankets, etc., for the use of invalids, and by 
a simple adaptation of the same manufacturing 
methods we were able to provide electrically heated 
garments for the use of airmen. The production of 
these was just beginning at the signing of the armis- 
tice. A considerable number of these suits had been 
made, and they are now standard equipment for all 
American military aviators flying at high altitudes. 
To avoid reducing engine-power an ingenious device 
consisting of a tiny electric generator operated by a 
little windmill attached to the frame of the machine 
is used to generate the current for these electrically 
warmed garments, and also for warming devices to 
prevent the mechanism of the machine-guns from jam- 
ming, due to the stiffening of the oil at low tem- 
peratures. 

For signaling purposes, every military airplane 
had to be equipped, in addition to its navigation 
lights, red, white, and green, arranged as they are 
on a ship, with rockets of different colors which could 
be fired from a specially made pistol having a bore 
of about an inch and a half, and with smoke-rockets 
for daylight signaling; another part of the equipment 
is the parachute-flare, used for night landings. As the 
airman approaches the earth, a little parachute is 



io8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

dropped over the side. It opens and floats gently 
earthward. A powerful magnesium light which illumi- 
nates the earth in a wide circle is suspended from the 
parachute, enabling the pilot to make a landing almost 
as readily at night as by day. The same bluish flares 
are used to light the target in night bombing. Neither 
of these devices is an American invention, but the 
ingenuity and resourcefulness required to find means 
of producing them in large quantities under pressure 
was a distinct American triumph. 

While the army was working out these devices, the 
navy was developing airplane appliances and equip- 
ment designed to render the navigation of seaplanes 
and flying-boats easier and safer when out of sight 
of land. Three radically new and immensely valu- 
able devices were developed before the termination 
of the war, the application of all of which to peace- 
time air navigation is of incalculable importance. 
These are the aerial sextant, the drift indicator, and 
the course-and-distance indicator. 

In the aerial sextant, known as the Byrd sextant, 
invented by Lieut. -Com. H. L. Byrd, a bubble in a 
tube takes the place of the sea horizon for observa- 
tions. A specially constructed lens is used in sighting 
the bubble, which is reflected in a mirror. The sun 
is reflected in another mirror. The observer brings 
the sun tangent to a line at the same time he brings 
the bubble tangent to the line. That gives the alti- 
tude of the sun. This is of especial value, as the avi- 
ator is often above the clouds, and even when flying at 
low altitudes the horizon is too dim to be seen clearly. 
With this new aerial sextant the curvature of the earth 
does not have to be taken into consideration in cal- 
culating position. The bubble is lighted at night, so 
that night observations of the stars may be taken. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 109 

New methods of astronomical calculations have 
been devised which enable the navigator to make 
his calculations in a fifth of the time that was for- 
merly necessary. A projection-chart of the Atlantic 




THE INSTRUMENT BOARD OF A NAVY SEAPLANE 

The pilot; must understand and constantly consult this array of instruments, 
which tell him how many revolutions per minute his propeller is making, his speed 
relative to the wind, whether or not he is on an even keel, his altitude, the tempera- 
ture and barometer pressure, the point of the compass toward which he is heading, 
the air pressure in his petrol-tank, the amount of gas and oil still available, and 
the temperature of his radiator water. The instruments not illuminated by 
electric lights have radium-coated figures making them luminous for night use. 



Ocean has been specially constructed for this purpose. 
This chart — a new invention — does away with diffi- 
cult mathematical calculations, enabling the aviator 
to determine his position in a few minutes. 

Another great problem of the sea-air navigator is 
the calculation of the speed and direction of the wind, 
both day and night. The compass can only give the 
course upon which the craft heads, and in determining 



no YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the true course proper allowance must be made for 
the sidewise drift caused by the wind. For example, 
a wind blowing thirty miles an hour toward the side 
of the 'plane will blow it thirty miles an hour out of 
its course. This fact alone makes the navigation of 
the air far more difficult than the navigation of the sea. 

To overcome this difficulty bombs have been in- 
vented which ignite upon striking the surface of the 
water and give a dense smoke and bright light for 
ten minutes. An instrument is used in conjunction 
with this bomb which enables the navigator to de- 
termine the velocity and direction of the wind by 
sighting on the smoke in the daytime and on the 
light at night. This instrument, called the speed-and- 
drift indicator, has proved successful. 

When the navigator has found the speed and direc- 
tion of the wind, he must then be able to calculate 
the course to steer to allow for this wind. To do this 
an instrument has been designed to solve the triangle 
of forces, thus doing away with cumbersome mathe- 
matical calculations. 

Perhaps the most important of all new inventions 
in aviation equipment, the radio telephone, is dis- 
tinctly a product of Yankee ingenuity. Every Amer- 
ican service-'plane built after we went into the war 
was equipped with one or another form of radio- 
telephone apparatus. The stories of this marvelous 
invention and of the radio compass are told in another 
chapter. 



VI 

THE CHEMICAL CONQUEST OF THE AIR 

ONE of the inspired writers of the Old Testament 
poetically refers to Satan as "Prince of the 
Powers of the Air." To those who look upon the 
war just ended as that Armageddon foretold in Holy 
Writ, the final earthly clash between good and evil, 
it is of more than passing interest to note that when 
Germany precipitated the conflict, in 19 14, the Kaiser 
could rightfully, in more senses than one, boast him- 
self "Prince of the Powers of the Air." 

Not only was Germany the only nation that had 
developed the airplane into an effective military 
weapon and built dirigibles capable of extensive 
aerial navigation ; it was the only country in the world 
that had at its command the power of extracting 
from the very air itself the one essential element 
without which modern warfare could not be waged, 
nitrogen. And it was not until Germany had per- 
fected processes for the fixation of atmospheric nitro- 
gen and accumulated a huge supply of nitrates and 
nitric acid that the wheels were set in motion for the 
campaign of world conquest of which the Prussian 
had so long dreamed. 

Nitrogen is the basis of all explosives. The com- 
monest of all the elements, perhaps, constituting four- 
fifths of the air we breathe, it is difficult to trap and 



ii2 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

almost impossible to hold in confinement when com- 
bined in the proportions that make explosives. It 
is, moreover, the one indispensable fertilizing element 
without which there could be no plant growth and 
for the lack of which the whole world would speedily 
starve were there not available means of restoring 
nitrogen to the soil. Until Germany developed proc- 
esses of taking nitrogen from the air and combining 
it with other elements, either as ammonia or nitric 
acid, the world relied almost entirely for its supply 
of nitrates, for war or for peace, on the saltpeter beds 
of Chile, the one known great natural deposit of 
nitrogen salts. 

Germany knew that a general European war would 
result in a blockade that would cut her off from the 
Chile nitrates, and she would not have dared to go to 
war without some means of supplying the need. The 
sending of Admiral von Spee's squadron to operate 
against commerce in South-American waters was 
Germany's attempt to cut off the Allies from the 
Chile nitrate supply. Every merchant-ship sunk by 
a submarine reduced by that much the tonnage 
available to bring nitrates to America and the Euro- 
pean Allies. 

No single item of America's war program was as 
audacious in its conception as the preparations which 
the War Department began immediately upon our 
entrance into the war for the immediate development, 
on a scale surpassing even Germany's ambitious 
undertaking, of processes and plants for the extrac- 
tion of nitrogen from the air. Nothing more forcibly 
demonstrated the confidence in and reliance upon the 
resourcefulness and ability of American scientists 
than the government's decision to beat Germany at 
her own game. None of the nation's undertakings 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 113 

for the prosecution of the war has left the country 
such a valuable heritage in the shape of tangible, 
material additions to our national wealth. 

How important nitrogen is in the composition of 
munitions is apparent if one considers for a moment 
what the various explosives are made of. Ordinary 
black powder is a mixture of charcoal, sulphur, and 
saltpeter, saltpeter being nitrate of sodium. Gun- 
cotton is nitrocellulose. Smokeless powder is also 
a nitrocellulose compound. Dynamite is nitro- 
glycerin mixed with an inert substance to form a 
solid mass. TNT is tri-nitro-toluol ; TNX is tri- 
nitro-xyol. The explosive charge used in grenades 
for trench warfare is ammonium nitrate. Picric acid, 
the base of the British lyddite, the French melinite, 
and the Japanese shimose, is the result of the treat- 
ment of carbolic acid with nitric acid. And in all of 
these the nitrogen element is the one essential to their 
explosive qualities. 

The extraction of nitrogen from the air as a labora- 
tory experiment was well known to all chemists. There 
was not in the United States a single plant for doing 
this commercially. In Canada, at Niagara Falls, 
there was one company engaged in the work, using a 
process that was different from that upon which 
Germany mainly relied. An American company 
owned the rights to the principal German process 
and had devised some modifications. A dozen chem- 
ists of national repute had proposed other methods, 
none of them beyond the laboratory stage, and there 
were the patents in our Patent Office of the German 
process. 

With this inadequate equipment the War Depart- 
ment began the construction at Sheffield, Alabama, 
of a gigantic plant for the fixation of atmospheric 



ii 4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

nitrogen, while a technical board of experts was ap- 
pointed to determine the process to be used. Sheffield 
was selected because there were some factory build- 
ings already available there and because it is close 
to Mussel Shoals, where the government had begun 
the development of a huge water-power project. All 
nitrogen-fixation processes depend upon the avail- 
ability of large amounts of electric current, the de- 
composition of the air being accomplished by passing 
it through an electric arc, or by some other means 
subjecting it to a temperature of from 3,000 to 6,000 
degrees. On the technical board were representa- 
tives of the Department of Agriculture as well as of 
the army and navy, since the plant is to be used for 
the production of nitrates for fertilizer when the 
military necessity for its operation no longer exists. 

First $30,000,000, then another $30,000,000, and 
at last much more than $100,000,000 was made avail- 
able for the nitrate plants, the one at Sheffield and 
four others in different parts of the country. There 
was no time to wait for the development of water- 
power; great steam-engines were installed to produce 
the enormous volume of high-voltage electric current 
needed for any of the processes. And while the nec- 
essary machinery for a limited production of nitrogen 
products by the Canadian process was being as- 
sembled, and other machinery was being built with 
which to produce more nitrogen from the air by the 
American-owned modified German process, one group 
of scientific and technical men was wrestling with the 
American patents on the original German process, 
which was known to require much less power per unit 
of production than any of the other known methods 
of inducing nitrogen to separate itself from the oxy- 
gen of the air and combine with soda or other common 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 115 

bases. Another group of scientists was examining the 
experiments of the dozen or more American chemists 
who had worked out nitrate-fixation processes in their 
laboratories. 

The story of the unraveling of the German method 
of making artificial nitrates, through the most patient 
experimenting, lasting more than a year, with the 
patents taken out in America by the German chemical 
trust, is only one of scores of similar tales that some 
day will make a book as fascinating as any detective 
story of fiction. Under the patent laws of the United 
States, the purpose of which is to give to inventors 
a monopoly limited to a brief term of years and then 
to throw their inventions open to public use, drawings 
and specifications filed with the patent application 
must be so explicit that, as the law reads, "those 
skilled in the art may reproduce the device or process ' ' 
by a mere examination of the papers. Study of this 
and other patents taken out by Germans in America, 
all of which were thrown open to the use of Americans 
when Germany and the United States went to war, 
proves that for many years German inventors and 
scientists have been practising deliberate deception 
in their American patent applications. The general 
principles involved were stated, it is true, but the 
detailed instructions were unintelligible, even to 
"those skilled in the art." 

An expert chemist of the Bureau of Chemistry, an 
electrical engineer of national reputation and a prac- 
tical electrician from the Washington Navy Yard, 
a man with twenty years of electrical experience 
behind him, tackled the problem. The working of the 
process called for a pressure of 1,500 pounds to the 
square inch inside of a tightly sealed cylinder heated 
to 1,170 degrees Centigrade. It was easy enough to 



n6 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

get the pressure, easy enough to get the temperature; 
how the two could be achieved at once was the puzzle. 
The drawings accompanying the patent specifications 
showed an electric wire running to the outside of the 
cylinder and ending there ! The three experts took this 
clue as their starting-point. After nine months they 
had discovered the secret in principle. They built a 
small-sized plant, and the electric-wiring burned out. 
The navy yard electrician found a way to overcome 
that ; now the government has, in addition to its other 
processes, an actual working plant producing nitrogen 
from the air by the economical German method. 

While this untangling of German trickery was going 
on still another process, all American and differing 
in many important respects from anything that had 
been done before, was developed at the expense of 
the government from the laboratory experiments of 
its inventor, Prof. John E. Bucher, of Brown Univer- 
sity. Professor Bucher's method of nitrogen fixation 
is simplicity itself. It does not require an expensive 
electric installation, and it produces not only the 
essential nitrogen compounds, but many valuable by- 
products. 

By the Bucher process, soda ash and powdered 
coke are mixed with powdered iron or with iron ore — 
either will do — and heated in an ordinary furnace 
through which air is passed. The result is cyanide 
of soda, with the iron uncombined, it having acted, 
as Professor Bucher phrases it, "as a chemical parson 
to unite the nitrogen of the air with the soda and the 
coke." This mysterious but effective chemical proc- 
ess, by which the mere presence of a substance that 
does not in any way enter into the combination is 
nevertheless essential to the formation of the com- 
bination, known to chemists as "catalysis," forms an 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 117 

important part of most of the processes for fixing 
atmospheric nitrogen and converting the derived 
products into other chemical forms. 

The cyanamide process, the first method adopted 
by the government, is based upon the fact that cal- 
cium carbide may be induced with comparative ease, 
at a temperature of 2,000° F., to absorb nitrogen 
which has been liberated from liquid air. When the 
liquid air begins to rise above its normal temperature 
of —380° F., pure nitrogen boils off. This is pumped 
to the electric ovens and absorbed by the carbide, 
leaving the oxygen of the air as a by-product. The 
compound of calcium carbide and nitrogen, known 
commercially as cyanamide, is itself valuable as a 
fertilizer, and by treatment with superheated steam 
its nitrogen may be released to enter into combination 
with the hydrogen of the steam, forming ammonia. 
This is the process invented by Doctors Frank and 
Caro, and developed by the German electrical trust. 
From 400,000 to 600,000 tons of cyanamide are now 
being produced annually in Germany. 

Through the development and application of these 
various processes for obtaining nitrogen from the air, 
coupled with the speeding up of nitrate importations 
from Chile, the United States was not only able to 
produce gunpowder and high explosives faster than 
we ourselves and the European Allies could use them 
up, even in the most intense period of the war, but 
we have now available a permanent source of nitrogen 
supply of the highest possible value and importance 
to agriculture, and as a reserve for munitions against 
future wars, and there have been established, as part 
of the necessary work in the manufacture of explosives, 
industries which can produce and are producing the 
materials for the manufacture of dyestuffs and a 



n8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

thousand other chemical products for which the world 
formerly depended upon Germany, but which America 
can now supply to all comers. 

Every one of the processes with which our govern- 
ment is working gives as its final product, not nitric 
acid, which is the form in which nitrogen is required 
'for explosives, but ammonia, which is the nitrogen 
product most easily adaptable to fertilizing purposes. 
The conversion of ammonia to nitric acid is simple 
enough as a laboratory experiment, but to do it on a 
commercial scale is quite a different matter. So, too, 
nitric acid is of comparatively little value as a basis 
for fertilizer, because of the expensive manipulations 
necessary to make it usable. There is a process of 
nitrogen fixation that gives nitric acid as its finished 
product — the electric-arc method of decomposing air 
by passing it through an enormous flaming arc, best 
known through the Birkeland-Eyde plants in Norway. 
This process, which involves temperatures up to 6,ooo° 
P. at a power-cost quite prohibitive except in 
Norway, has been the best advertised of all the air- 
nitrogen methods. The wide publicity given to these 
Norway plants, always coupled with the perfectly 
truthful assertion that the process could not be 
economically operated elsewhere, now appears to have 
been due to a definite German propaganda having 
for its double purpose the discouragement of nitrogen- 
fixation attempts in other countries and the diversion 
of attention from the military value of the Haber and 
cyanamide processes. For since the European war 
began it has been disclosed that these Norwegian 
plants, even at three dollars a year per horse-power, 
had never been commercially self-supporting, but had 
from the beginning been subsidized by Germany, 
which was thus enabled to accumulate a huge store 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 119 

of nitric acid for munitions while ostensibly giving all 
of its attention to the development of fertilizer re- 
sources by other processes. But these other processes, 
cyanamide, the Haber process, and the methods of 
producing by-product ammonia, are now known to 
the rest of the world, as they have long been known 
to Germany, to be equally available for the production 
of nitric acid. The simple method that produces this 
result is the invention of Prof. Wilhelm Ostwald. 
Pass a mixture of ammonia and air through a heated 
chamber, at the end of which is a platinum screen, 
serving as a catalyst, and, presto! the oxygen of the 
air replaces the hydrogen of the ammonia and we have 
nitric acid. 

This bit of chemical wizardry was duly patented in 
the United States and Great Britain, with the cus- 
tomary German camouflage. British chemical ex- 
perts found out how to do it, and now Great Britain 
and France are each producing something like 200,000 
tons of nitric acid from atmospheric nitrogen annually, 
mainly by the medium of the cyanamide process, to 
supplement their supplies of Chile nitrates and their 
imports of explosives from America. And that is 
what our government is doing in the Sheffield plant 
for the oxidation of ammonia. We are now able to 
utilize nitrogen from the air, fixed by any process, 
for we have at hand the means of converting it readily 
into nitric acid for war purposes, while in its ammonia 
form it is readily usable in a variety of combinations 
for fertilizer. Nor does all of the ammonia have to 
be oxidized to make it available for purposes of death 
and destruction. By using a part of the nitric acid 
in combination with ammonia, forming ammonium 
nitrate, we have a prime explosive of peculiarly deadly 
force. Much of the American supply of by-product 



120 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

ammonia, all of which was commandeered by the War 
Department, was utilized in this way, the nitric acid 
required being obtained from Chile nitrates. The hand- 
grenades which figured so largely in trench warfare 
derive their explosive quality from ammonium nitrate. 

The remaining step in the nitrate program, that of 
encouraging and stimulating the production of by- 
product ammonia, furnishes another illustration of 
the way in which the elements of the closely knit 
German industrial scheme dovetail into each other. 
Germany developed the coal-tar color industry, based 
on the discoveries of Sir William Perkin, as well as 
the coal-tar drug industry, and, by subsidized manu- 
facture and price-cutting, discouraged the utilization 
of coal by-products in other countries. And in the 
process of saving the tar for these purposes there is 
also recovered from coal a considerable volume of 
ammonia, either as such or as ammonium sulphate. 
The proportions of by-products per ton of coal 
coked by the modern retort process are around 20 
pounds of ammonium sulphate or its equivalent in 
ammonia, 15 gallons of tar, and 2 gallons of benzol 
and toluol, the latter being the basis of the most 
powerful explosive yet devised, tri-nitro-toluol or, more 
familiarly, TNT. Moreover, every ton of coal con- 
verted into metallurgical coke in the old-fashioned 
"beehive" coke-ovens results in the waste of about 
5,000 cubic feet of gas and the loss of 200 pounds of 
coke. 

We have made great progress in by-product coking 
in this country since the Germans invaded Belgium. 
The end of this war found the United States, from this 
by-product source alone, far more independent of other 
nations for its essential nitrogen supply than it probably 
would have become in a hundred years of peace. 



VII 

POTASH, SULPHURIC ACID, AND DYESTUFFS 

WHILE the establishment of processes of fixing 
atmospheric nitrogen is the most important 
single chemical development of the war so far as 
America's future is concerned, it is but one of hun- 
dreds of new processes or adaptations of old processes 
that had to be worked out and applied for the first 
time in America on a commercial scale in order to 
insure an adequate supply of munitions, or of com- 
modities of which war conditions had deprived us; 
nearly all of these war-born chemical industries, more- 
over, have definite and valuable importance to the 
peace-time commerce of the nation. 

Listen first to the story of potassium, the chemical 
element represented in + he symbolism of science by 
the letter "K" and discussed here in terms of its 
oxide, K 2 0, under its English name of potash, or its 
German equivalent, Kali. For you cannot discuss 
potash in any language or in any quarter of the globe 
without reference to Germany. Potash has for years 
been one of Germany's trump cards in that nation's 
game of Weltpolitik. No less an authority than Prof. 
Wilhelm Ostwald, winner of the Nobel prize in chem- 
istry in 1909, author of Energetische Grundlagen der 
Kulturwissenschaft, is sponsor for the boast that Ger- 
many, through her control of the only known large 
deposit of potash salts, could say which of the "un- 



i22 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

cultured" nations should eat and which starve. And 
until Germany, in January, 1Q15, placed an embargo 
on the exportation of potash, practically the entire 
commercial supply of the whole world was obtained 
from the mines of Stassfurt, in the Prussian province 
of Saxony. Not a pound of German potash was 
added to the stocks on hand between that date and 
the spring of 19 19. These stocks were soon exhausted 
not only in the United States, but in the rest of the 
civilized world. We did not starve, but even allowing 
the usual 90 per cent, discount for "swank" from Pro- 
fessor Ostwald's claim, we did face a situation that 
was serious and that would have been more serious if 
American inventive genius had not found at least 
the key to permanent independence of the German 
Kali monopoly. For while potash is one of the most 
widely distributed of the elements, every attempt for 
the last forty years to produce it in commercial 
quantities from any of the natural deposits has been 
blocked by the "dumping" of potash from Germany 
at prices that made competition impossible. 

The United States, in normal peace times, used an 
average of about 250,000 tons of German potash 
annually. The demand has been steadily increasing. 
Agricultural Department estimates of the normal 
annual need was around 500,000 tons. In the first 
two years after the German embargo went into effect 
we had used up all the reserve stock on hand, together 
with a considerable quantity re-exported from South 
America as the price obtainable here climbed from 
$40 to $500 or so per ton, and throughout 191 7 we 
had no potash except what we produced ourselves. 
This 191 7 production amounted to around 30,000 
tons — about one-eighth of the pre-war normal aver- 
age and one-sixteenth of the estimated 191 7 need! 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 123 

There was somewhat more than this available for 
191 8; there was still more available for 1919. By 
19 1 9 it seemed apparent that it would be possible 
within three or four years so to establish certain of 
the processes of potash production that whatever 
Germany might attempt in the way of unfair com- 
petition could be met with profit to the producer and 
the full benefit of comparative prices to the consumer. 

While it is probably true that the use of potash 
in the past has been excessive, due to the very effec- 
tive propaganda for a generation and more of the 
German Kali Syndicate, it is nevertheless true that 
the sandy soils of the Atlantic seaboard states re- 
quire this element, under present agricultural condi- 
tions, in larger quantities than nature provides through 
the constant breaking down of the micas, feldspars, 
and green sands which are the universal reserve. 
The citrus fruits of Florida, the cotton and tobacco 
of Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, the potatoes 
and garden truck of the eastern shore of Maryland 
and south Jersey, cannot be grown commercially 
without potash. By the beginning of 191 8 the De- 
partment of Agriculture reported the crops in these 
and other sections where potash formerly was used 
freely were showing signs of potash hunger 51917 crops 
were smaller per acre, the plants less vigorous. Texas 
needs no potash for its cotton, Maine can produce 
potatoes without it ; tobacco, on the other hand, wher- 
ever grown, absorbs potash as a sponge does water. 

As I have said, there is plenty of potash ; the prob- 
lem was to make it commercially available. Many 
sources of potash, unprofitable to work in peace times, 
contributed to the small available supply of 191 7-1 8. 
Most of it came from the alkali lakes of western 
Nebraska and southern California. Some came from 



i2 4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the Great Salt Lake. Some was produced from the 
alunite deposits of southern Utah. A good deal was 
obtained from the kelp-beds of the Pacific coast. 
One source of potash supply only has given evidence 
of probable ability to meet all the requirements of 
permanent potash independence for the United States, 
namely, practically inexhaustible supply of raw ma- 
terials, low enough cost of production to withstand 
competition under any conditions, and geographical 
distribution such as to minimize transportation costs. 
This is the process of recovery of potash from cement- 
kiln and blast-furnace dust. 

Like many other important discoveries, what the 
inventor of the electric precipitation method of recover- 
ing potash from cement and blast-furnace dust found 
was not what he was looking for. Columbus set out 
to find a short route to India and discovered America; 
F. G. Cottrell undertook to preserve the orange-groves 
of Riverside, California, from destruction by dust 
from a cement-plant and discovered a new industrial 
and agricultural resource. It has long been known to 
chemists that limestone, coke, iron ore, and clay, the 
ingredients used in cement kilns and blast-furnaces, 
contain much potash, in the form of insoluble silicates. 
When Mr. Cottrell, who is now chief metallurgist of 
the United States Bureau of Mines, found that the way 
to prevent the dust from a cement -kiln from being car- 
ried out through the stack and devastating the vege- 
tation of the surrounding countryside was to pass the 
furnace fumes through a series of charged electric 
wires, the problem of what to do with the quantities 
of dust thus accumulated at the kiln came up next for 
solution. Analysis of the dust disclosed, as had been 
anticipated, that it contained a very high percentage 
of potash, but more important than that fact, its 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 125 

atomic affiliations had been so readjusted by the heat 
of the kiln that it was now readily soluble and could 
be recovered by a simple process of leaching. 

The process of precipitating the cement-kiln dust 
and extracting the potash content has already found 
wide application. It furnishes at once a solution of 
the problem of dust disposition, which every manu- 
facturer of Portland cement confronts as state after 
state makes it illegal to discharge the dust into the 
air, and of preventing the alkaline potash carried in 
the fumes from eating out the linings of the flues. 
Cement manufacturers have for years been trying to 
use as small a proportion as possible of potash- 
bearing ingredients. Now those plants that have 
installed the Cottrell method find they can add sub- 
stances heretofore discarded and obtain a more profit- 
able by-product. 

The annual production of Portland cement in the 
United States is about 90,000,000 barrels. The aver- 
age amount of recoverable potash, as determined by 
a very thorough and careful survey that took in 104 
American plants and nine in Canada, is about one and 
three-quarter pounds to the barrel of cement produced. 
Without making any allowance for improved methods 
of recovery, or for the increased output made necessary 
by rebuilding after the war, here is a potential supply 
of 75,000 tons a year of potash on a basis that will 
compete with the German product on any sort of 
terms, and which is mainly produced in the sections 
of the country where it is most needed, thus saving 
transportation expense. 

The blast-furnaces of the United States offer a 
vastly greater supply of potash, awaiting only the re- 
placement of their present gas-washing apparatus 
with electric precipitation devices. In this industry, 



126 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

as in the cement industry, the main question is one 
of installation of the necessary equipment. Extensive 
experiments by the Bethlehem Steel Company have 
demonstrated the presence of a very large percentage 
of recoverable potash salts in the waste gas from the 
furnaces, now used as fuel and for gas-engines. This 
gas, in blast-furnace practice, requires washing to rid it 
of impurities, of which potash is one. The electric 
precipitation process purifies it better than washing 
does and leaves a hot, dry gas instead of a cold, wet 
one. The equipment of blast-furnaces now in oper- 
ation for this purpose will necessarily be slow and ex- 
pensive, because of the war demand for steel products 
and their consequent high price and the difficulty of 
getting any sort of new machinery for any but war 
purposes. But sooner or later, it now seems clear, 
a very large part of our supply of cheap potash will 
come from these heretofore wasted supplies. 

Let us turn from the science of husbandry back to 
the art of war. The United States had to supply 
explosives not only for ourselves, but for the Allies 
of Europe. To some extent the Allies could use our 
powder and explosives, but most of their demands 
were for explosives of somewhat different type, for 
which their guns and methods were particularly 
adapted. The British use a smokeless powder based 
on nitroglycerin, for example; ours is made of nitro- 
cellulose. It was a distinct compliment to the quality 
of American powder when, early in 191 8, the British 
High Command issued an order that thereafter all 
barrage fire should be conducted with American nitro- 
cellulose powder, because its uniform quality mini- 
mized the danger of shells falling short and killing 
their own men. For the purposes for which we use 
TNT the British use principally picric acid. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 127 

Picric acid is made by the action of sulphuric acid 
on carbolic acid. Carbolic acid, up to the beginning 
of the war, had been chiefly made in England, from 
the coal-tar derived from the manufacture of illumi- 
nating gas. The need for explosives compelled the 
shutting off of exports of coal-tar and its products 
from England, and in this country we had no im- 
portant coal-tar supply. Very few American com- 
munities have illuminating-gas plants — -none but the 
oldest and largest cities. And even in these as much 
petroleum as coal is used in gas manufacture. And 
whereas in Europe great quantities of coal-tar and 
other by-products of coal have long been obtained 
from specially designed ovens used for the prepara- 
tion of metallurgical coke, the United States, in spite 
of its huge steel industry, was still producing most of 
its coke from the old-fashioned, wasteful "beehive" 
coke-ovens, the tar and their valuable by-products 
going to waste. 

But we had to have carbolic acid, we had to have 
toluol and the other coal derivatives, so one set of 
scientists, under government direction, began the in- 
stallation of plants to recover these precious wastes 
from gas-works and coking-plants, while others studied 
the problem of new methods of converting these 
derivatives into the forms requisite for war. A Newark 
chemist, who had never been especially interested in 
carbolic acid, discovered a method of producing this 
valuable chemical by the treatment of benzol with 
nitric acid. Mr. Edison financed the greatest carbolic- 
acid plant ever built. 

Soon we were manufacturing it and converting it 
into huge supplies of picric acid for the British and 
French, and incidentally providing the raw material 
from which phonograph records are made. The 



128 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

tough, hard disks used in all makes of talking-machines 
nowadays, as well as some of the most important in- 
sulating materials and substitutes for wood and metal 
where extreme hardness and durability are required, 
of which bakelite is the best known, are made from 
carbolic acid in combination with other materials. 
This whole field of applied science is the result of 
research by American chemists. 

To the uninitiated layman the fact that the activity 
of German submarines and the consequent increase 
in freight rates and scarcity of ships made it almost 
impossible to import Spanish pyrites had no especial 
significance. To the industrial chemist it meant that 
we could no longer manufacture sulphuric acid unless 
we found some other source of available sulphur; 
to the manufacturer in almost every branch of in- 
dustry this meant that he must close down his plant, 
for sulphuric acid is not only the one universally in- 
dispensable industrial chemical, but in the manufact- 
ure of explosives its use is imperative. 

We have in the United States the largest and purest 
known deposits of sulphur. These sulphur-beds of 
Louisiana and Texas are all but inexhaustible, but 
because the manufacture of sulphuric acid from pure 
sulphur is more costly and complicated than that of 
obtaining it from certain sulphur compounds, the 
greater proportion of our sulphuric-acid production 
had for many years been from the pyrites imported 
from the Rio Tinto mines. Under war pressure, 
however, means were found for converting the pure 
sulphur into acid economically ; incidentally there was 
developed a process of making "fuming" sulphuric 
acid in any quantity and cheaper than ever before 
dreamed of. Moreover, the stimulus of the war 
demand led to a great increase in the volume of sul- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 129 

phuric acid produced by the treatment of the fumes 
from smelters treating sulphur-bearing ores. Almost 
all gold, copper, and zinc ores mined in this country 
contain sulphides. At almost every smelter the sul- 
phur content is neglected and allowed to escape into 
the air, not only with a direct economic loss, but 
in some localities ruining the adjacent countryside 
by the fumes, which are highly destructive to vege- 
tation, as evidenced by the barren landscape of Butte, 
Montana. As a result of efforts for the prevention of 
atmospheric pollution, notably the action of the state 
of Georgia against the state of Tennessee for the sup- 
pression of fumes from a smelter situated close to the 
boundary line, processes for the recovery of these 
gases and the conversion of their sulphur content into 
sulphuric acid have been so perfected that even under 
normal conditions they pay well for their installation. 
Several such installations were made, one with a 
capacity of 1,000,000 tons a year. 

To turn back again from war to peace, let us con- 
sider a paradox — war's contribution to the physical 
loveliness of the world. There is no more wonderful 
transformation known to science than the conversion 
of the sticky tars and vile-smelling oils obtained from 
the slow combustion of coal into the brilliant dyes 
that furnish forth the palette of the artist, clothe the 
fair sex with the tints of the butterfly's wing, and lend 
beauty to the works of man surpassing even the beau- 
ties of nature. Not only colors, but perfumes and a 
wide variety of invaluable drugs are also derived 
from coal. 

An Englishman, Sir William Perkin, first discovered 
that this could be done; the Germans developed the 
coal-tar industry and by unfair underselling drove 
the indigo-planters, the madder-growers, and other 



130 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

producers of natural dyestuffs out of business and 
obtained a world monopoly. One of the greatest 
triumphs of applied science is the building up in 
America of a dyestuff industry, using the crudes and 
intermediates produced from coal by the same proc- 
esses that were devised for munitions manufacture, 
and by patient and costly experiment discovering the 
German processes of converting these into every color, 
shade, and tint known to commerce. 

In the dyestuff field, as in other chemical industries, 
the myth of German invincibility was firmly fixed in 
the public mind. Subsidized German plants sold 
their products below cost until their foreign competi- 
tors were put out of business. As soon as this had 
been accomplished, it was no longer necessary for the 
German exporters to sell at or below cost. The 
tendency to this result was recognized by the German 
government from the first, and every facility was 
afforded to the growing export trade. It was fully 
realized by both the civil and military authorities 
that if a world monopoly in the dyestuff industry 
could be built up the military strength of Germany 
would be colossally enhanced, since it alone, of all the 
great powers, would then be in a position to secure 
immediate supplies of the vast quantities of munitions 
likely to be needed in a modern war. 

Up to August, 19 14, the American industry in dye- 
stuffs and coal-tar drugs consisted of little more than 
a series of rather small assembling-plants. In spite 
of the fact that enormous supplies of coal-tar were 
available and that several of the crudes could be 
secured in this country under most advantageous 
conditions, hardly any of the necessary intermediates 
were made here, and the manufacture of dyes was 
almost entirely confined to working upon intermedi- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 131 

ates imported from Germany. The shutting off of 
the supply of dyestuffs by the British blockade forced 
American manufacturers to attempt to supply the 
demand. The most important processes, however, 
essential to the production of the most valuable and 
useful dyestuffs were covered by American patents 
taken out by Germans. These patents formed a 
colossal obstacle to the development of the American 
dyestuff industry. Under the Trading with the 
Enemy Act, however, power was given to the Alien 
Property Custodian to take over and sell these Ger- 
man dyestuff patents. And in order to protect the 
new American industry which this action was in- 
tended to develop, the patents were sold to an or- 
ganization known as the Chemical Foundation, in 
which practically every important American manu- 
facturer was a stockholder, the stock being placed 
in the hands of a voting trust of eminent citizens, 
and the charter was so framed that under the patents 
non-exclusive rights only can be granted on proper 
terms to all proper applicants, and must be granted to 
the United States free of cost. Approximately 4,500 
dyestuff and drug patents were sold to the Chemical 
Foundation for $250,000, thus making it possible for 
any genuine American, whether a stockholder of the 
company or not, to secure the benefits of these patents 
on fair and equal terms. These patents, now being 
owned by Americans, enable their owners, the Amer- 
ican dyestuff and drug manufacturers, to forbid and 
prevent the importation of German-made products 
covered by these patents or made by processes so 
covered. 

Here, again, when the effort was made to follow 
the instructions given in the German patents, was 
disclosed evidence of Hun trickery. Information ab- 



i 3 2 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

solutely essential was omitted or stated in such a 
misleading fashion as to necessitate weeks or even 
months of painstaking chemical research before suc- 
cess was achieved. There is nothing so complicated 
in all industry as the manufacture of dyes; so com- 
plicated and various are the chemical processes in- 
volved that there is no single chemist who can by 
any possibility operate all of them. 

A lifetime of study enables a chemist to learn how 
to make some of the "intermediates" ; other chemists, 
whose life-work has been in entirely different fields, 
must develop the remaining processes. Chemists 
who can make synthetic indigo, for example, which 
is now being produced in America from the same raw 
materials that are used in making picric acid and 
lyddite, may have no familiarity whatever with the 
processes for making sulphur black. Each step in 
the process of converting the raw material into the 
finished dyestuff is, indeed, an industry in itself, and 
from five to ten different steps, each requiring its 
own independent plant, are necessary. 

How completely American chemical manufacturers 
have solved the dye problem, with the co-operation 
of the government and the utilization of the coal by- 
products industries established under war pressure, 
is shown by the fact that a range of 1 7 5 different colors, 
including all that are staple for every sort of fabric, 
are now made in America equal in every way to the 
best that Germany ever made. In the four years of 
the Great War the value of American-made dyestuff s 
increased from $3,000,000 annually to $87,000,000. 
We used to import $9,000,000 of dyestuff s from Ger- 
many every year, but in 19 18 we exported $20,000,000 
worth to the markets Germany once claimed as her 
sole and exclusive property. 



VIII 

POISON GAS 

THERE is no phase of applied science in which 
German supremacy at the beginning of the war 
was so definite as in the field of chemistry; there 
is no field in which Germany's defeat has been so 
complete and so permanent. Prior to 1914 Germany 
had for nearly forty years been the world center of 
chemical industry. Few important chemical dis- 
coveries were ever made by German scientists, but 
with the aid of government subsidies great industrial 
enterprises, based upon the researches of scientists 
of other nations, were developed, competition by 
other nations was crushed by means of underselling 
and sharp trade practices and an absolute monopoly 
was established in scores of chemical products which 
modern civilization had accustomed the whole world 
to regard as necessaries of life. 

All the huge industrial machinery devoted to chem- 
ical manufactures in Germany was at the disposal 
of the German government. When the war began 
not only the physical plants, but the skill and re- 
sourcefulness of tens of thousands of chemists, trained 
for just this emergency in the German technical 
schools and universities, were thrown into the scales 
against the Allies. In a sense, the greatest victory of 
the war was won when American and Allied chemists 
matched science against science, not only in the game 
10 



134 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

of war, but in the intensive application to the arts of 
peace of the knowledge which Germany fatuously 
believed she alone possessed. 

German chemical science went down to defeat all 
along the line. In the direct shock of battle Allied 
chemistry met German chemistry and overwhelmed 
it; behind the lines America and Great Britain built 
up their defenses against the "war after the war" 
and established once for all the independence of the 
rest of the world in chemical industry. There is no 
other industrial development due to war pressure that 
is fraught with such lasting importance as the de- 
velopment of new chemical industries in America, 
and none that so immediately and directly touches 
the lives of everybody. 

The most spectacular and dramatic challenge by 
German chemistry was the use of poison gas as a 
weapon of war. A wave of indignation swept over 
the civilized world at the news from the battle-field 
of Ypres, when five thousand Canadian soldiers were 
suffocated by gas on April 22, 191 5. The Allies were 
slow to retaliate in kind; respect for the rules of 
civilized warfare set forth in the Hague conventions, 
of which the use of poison gas was in direct contra- 
vention, restrained them for more than a year. But 
when the basic law of self-preservation at last com- 
pelled them to meet the enlarged volume and in- 
creasing deadliness of German gas by the use of the 
same weapon, there were no half-way measures taken. 
The United States had never signed the clause of the 
Hague Convention forbidding the use of gas, although 
Germany had ratified it on September 4, 1900. We 
were violating no pledge, therefore, in using poison 
gas to the limit. 

By the summer of 19 18 the Allied and American 



136 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

forces were delivering against the Germans daily five 
times as great a volume of poison gas as the Germans 
were using. The stopping power and deadliness of 
the gases used on the Allied side were, moreover, 
definitely greater than the German gases possessed. 

Not only did the Allies analyze, match, and improve 
upon every form of poison gas the Germans used, 
but American chemists developed a poison gas having 
at least seventy- two times the killing power of the 
deadliest German gas! 

It is literally true that had the war gone on to the 
spring campaign of iqiq, upon which America's prep- 
arations were being focused, we would have been 
able, by the use of this new gas, actually to smother 
the German army by divisions at a time. Not only 
this most lethal of all known poisons was at our dis- 
posal, but we had in preparation huge mobile guns 
for hurling bombs of this gas incredible distances and, 
even more wonderful, we had all but perfected and 
were preparing to manufacture automatic apparatus 
for dropping containers of this new poison from the 
air, at a distance of a hundred miles or more from our 
farthest front. When one of these containers or bombs 
burst there would have remained no living thing within 
a radius of a mile or more a few minutes later. 

The chemical secret of this new gas has not been 
disclosed. It is the invention of Prof. W. Lee Lewis, 
who left the chair of chemistry at Northwestern Uni- 
versity to serve as a captain in the Ordnance Depart- 
ment of the army, and was assigned to duty with the 
Bureau of Mines. While working in the laboratories 
at American University, Washington, Captain Lewis 
succeeded in putting together a chemical compound 
such as had never before been recorded and which, 
in its peculiarly toxic effects, acts upon the human 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 137 

system in a manner different from any known poison. 
It is related in Washington that Captain Lewis, while 
a student of chemistry, had by accident effected this 
or a similar compound and nearly lost his own life as a 




ONE OF THE POISON-GAS PLANTS 

The soldiers are sending 75-millimeter shells into the chamber where automatic 
machinery fills them. 



result, so his Washington discovery was not an acci- 
dent, but the result of an almost forgotten personal 
experience. 

The story of "lewisite," as this deadly gas is now 



1 38 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

known, is one of the most romantic of all the stories 
of Yankee ingenuity in the war. It was half a year 
and more after the signing of the armistice before 
there was any official sanction for the publication 
even of the fact of its existence. No secret of all the 
war secrets was more carefully guarded. The sub- 
stance itself was known in the official records only 
as "G-34." When any curious inquirer wanted to 
know what "G-34" stood for he was told it was 
"methyl," a word which had no relation to the actual 
stuff. Even in the Division of Chemical Warfare few 
officers except those actually engaged in the manu- 
facture of "methyl" had any conception of its potency 
and purpose. 

Lewisite is an oily liquid of an amber color and with 
the odor of geranium blossoms. It is highly explosive 
and on contact with water it bursts into flame. Let 
loose in the open air, it diffuses into a gas which kills 
instantly on the inhalation of the smallest amount 
that can be measured by science. A single drop of 
the liquid on the hand is sufficient to cause death after 
a few hours; persons poisoned by lewisite die in 
fearful agony. The pain on contact is acute and almost 
unendurable. It penetrates through the skin and 
poisons the blood. It affects the kidneys first. Then 
it hardens the cell- tissues of the lungs, causing strangu- 
lation and contraction of the heart. 

When the armistice was signed the Chemical War- 
fare Division had on hand 150 tons of lewisite, 
enough to have killed half the population of the 
United States if the containers had been opened at 
strategic points. To-day there is none of the stuff 
in existence except a few carefully guarded samples 
in the possession of the Bureau of Mines and the War 
Department, and even the buildings where it was 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 139 

made and the machinery used in its manufacture 
have been utterly destroyed. 

Lewisite was manufactured at Willoughby, Ohio, 
a suburb of Cleveland, in a plant known to the men 
who worked in it as "the mouse-trap." Every man 
who was taken into this plant to work was required 
to sign an agreement that he would not leave the 
inclosure, surrounded by a high, tight, barbed-wire 
fence, until the war was over. The signing of the 
armistice released from their voluntary prison eight 
hundred men, many of whom had not been outside 
of the "mouse-trap" since work at the plant was 
begun on July 26, 1918. It was on July 12th that 
orders were given to proceed with the manufacture 
of lewisite. On July 19th, Col. F. M. Dorsey, who 
had stepped into uniform from the post of chemical 
engineer of the General Electric Company, had taken 
over the abandoned plant of the Ben Hur Motor 
Company at Willoughby and put officers in charge; 
by the 26th there was an armed guard of twenty-five 
men about the place, the inside of the building was 
being fitted up for work, and laboratory equipment was 
arriving on passenger-trains as baggage. Within three 
months lewisite gas was being produced at a rate 
that soon reached a possible output of ten tons a 
day. Two of the five steps in the process of manu- 
facture as it was originally worked out by Captain 
Lewis were eliminated after the plant was in operation. 
Many of the necessary materials were exceedingly 
difficult to obtain, and additions had to be made to 
the plant for their manufacture on the premises. 

The utmost pains were taken to guard the secret. 
The men in the plant were selected with the greatest 
care, after their records had been carefully scrutinized. 
They could write letters, but were not permitted to 



i 4 o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

give any address but that of a locked box in the 
Cleveland Post Office, through which all mail was 
passed. Telegrams were sent through Nela Park, 
Colonel Dorsey's headquarters. The hours were long 
and the work hard; the risk was tremendous. The 
workers were supplied, however, with ample reading- 
matter, with a phonograph and grand piano, and 
kind-hearted people in the neighborhood sent in fruit 
and pies, so life in the "mouse-trap" was not without 
some compensations. And in spite of the frightfully 
poisonous nature of the stuff they were making, not 
a single man was poisoned; the only death in the 
plant occurred from influenza. To protect the men 
while at work there was devised a mask and overall 
suit that rendered the wearers absolutely immune. 
Masks that gave full protection against the most 
powerful German gases were useless against lewisite. 
Chemists of the Chemical Warfare Service declare 
that in the event of another war it would take an 
enemy a year or more to discover a method of pro- 
tection against lewisite. Ordinary gas-masks would 
be as useless as mosquito-netting. 

Speedily as the "mouse- trap" was built, it was de- 
molished even more speedily. To leave evidence that 
might enable some prying Hun, by examining ma- 
chinery, tanks, and apparatus, to guess the secret of 
G-34 would be as dangerous as to allow the stuff itself 
to remain in containers that might at any time spring 
a leak and poison a whole community. So the whole 
stock on hand, except for a few small samples, was 
placed in heavy iron containers and loaded on a 
freight- train, probably the most extraordinary train 
that ever passed over a railroad. Under an armed 
guard, traveling on a special schedule, unaccompanied 
by any railway employees except the engine-driver, it 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 141 

took two days to travel from Cleveland to the Edge- 
wood Arsenal, near Baltimore. There the containers 
were loaded on a ship and taken out to sea, where 
they were gently lowered into the water at a point 
where the Atlantic Ocean is about three miles deep. 
The slow corrosive action of the sea- water will event- 
ually eat through the containers, the liberated lewisite 
will mingle with it and combine with the chemicals 




FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: AMERICAN, BRITISH, FRENCH, AND GERMAN 

GAS-MASKS 



of the ocean to form new and non-toxic substances. 
Even the fishes in the vicinity, the chemists believe, 
will not be poisoned. 

Two days after the armistice was signed workmen 
began tearing down the "mouse- trap." By February 
1st there remained not a trace of the whole extensive 
system of barracks and laboratories where once the 
most deadly chemical compound ever put together by 
human ingenuity had been made. 

I have said that this new gas is estimated to be 
seventy-two times as deadly as "mustard" gas; let 
me try to convey an impression of just how deadly 
it is. 

Mustard gas, as made in the Edgewood Arsenal, 
near Baltimore, where our war-gas production was 



i 4 2 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

centered, penetrates the clothing and shoes of men 
exposed to it, causing frightful burns. A single drop 
of the concentrated, liquefied gas has been known to 
cause a fatal burn. Only the most perfect ventilating 
system and the wearing of masks, rubber gloves, and 
rubberized protective clothing by those engaged in 
the dangerous processes of its manufacture made it 
possible to make it at all. Even with these precau- 
tions the casualties at the Edgewood Arsenal ran an 
average of three per cent, a day, and when the armis- 
tice was signed there were three hundred men in the 
camp hospital suffering from mustard-gas burns, and 
many others had been invalided to reconstruction 
hospitals. 

A soldier who had been handling some of the in- 
gredients of mustard gas brushed a mosquito from his 
ear without first removing his gloves; two days later 
his ear had literally been burned off. 

An officer came out of the laboratory into one of 
the offices. Carelessly, he rested his glove-incased 
hand at the back of a swivel-chair while he chatted 
for a few minutes. The next day the officer who sat 
in the chair felt a burning pain in the upper part of 
his back; two days later he was dead. The mustard 
gas had burned into his spinal cord. It takes two 
pounds of mustard gas to load a seventy-five-milli- 
meter shell; at the signing of the armistice we had on 
hand 419 tons of this stuff — enough to load 419,000 
shells. The charge of one shell is calculated to put 
out of action every one within fifty yards when it 
explodes. 

Mustard gas is one of the finished products of our 
war preparations for which there is no peace-time use. 
The great plants built to produce the chemicals that 
enter into its composition, however, and the huge 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 143 

supply of those chemicals, ate a distinct addition to 
the nation's industrial assets. There was no way of 
disposing of the supply of mustard gas on hand at 
the close of the war but take it out to sea and sink it, 
containers and all; the action of sea-water, as the gas 
slowly leaks out of the corroded containers, neu- 
tralizes its poison properties. It could not be dis- 




CONTAINERS OF POISON GAS READY TO SHIP TO FRANCE 



charged into the air anywhere on the face of the earth 
without the risk of destroying life. More than once, 
while hostilities were under way, there were many 
tons of mustard gas in New York harbor, enough to 
kill every person in Manhattan if it were let loose 
with the wind blowing in the right direction. 

The basis of mustard gas, as of the other war gases, 
is chlorin. The first gas used by the Germans at 
Ypres, in fact, was probably pure chlorin. It has a 
commercial use as a bleaching agent, and electrolytic 
processes for its production from sodium chlorid — 



i 4 4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

common salt — were well known; but there was not 
enough being produced annually in the whole United 
States when this country entered the war to supply 
the army's needs for a week. So at the Edgewood 
Arsenal there was built a huge plant for the decom- 
position of brine by electricity, and the collection of 
the products of decomposition — chlorin, caustic soda, 
and hydrogen. This plant, the largest in the world, 
is said, by American and foreign chemists who have 
inspected it, to be also the most efficient and econom- 
ical in operation. Its capacity of one hundred tons 
a day of chlorin will be, it is expected, available for 
commercial purposes. 

The process of making mustard gas had to be worked 
out by scientists after unexploded German gas-shells 
containing this new poison had been analyzed by 
other chemists and the exact nature of the gas ascer- 
tained. Whether by reason of a better process or 
purer raw materials, American mustard gas is more 
powerful than the German. Gas-masks that provided 
perfect protection for our troops against the most 
powerful German gas were not enough protection 
against our own, for the workers in the Edgewood 
Arsenal had always to be prepared to respond to a 
gas alarm. So a new gas-mask was invented and 
issued to our troops, as well as to the gas-workers. 

To trace back the constituents of mustard gas and 
the other poison gases to their sources and describe 
the new methods and processes that had to be de- 
veloped before we could make a ton of ' ' dichlordiethyl- 
sulphid," which is the technical name for mustard 
gas, would make an interesting book in itself. First 
there had to be insured an ample supply of pure 
sulphur, through which the chlorin could be passed 
to make chlorid of sulphur; then processes devised 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 145 

of producing ethylene, a constituent of coal gas, but 
which may also be made by treating sulphuric acid 
with pure alcohol. For these and other war purposes 
there have been wonderful developments in the pro- 




LOADING GAS-SHELLS BY AUTOMATIC MACHINERY 



duction of sulphur and of alcohol, concerning which 
I tell some of the interesting phases elsewhere. 

Picric acid, the high explosive that forms the basis 
of the British lyddite, the French melinite, and the 
Japanese shimose, was being manufactured in large 
quantities in this country for the British before the 
United States entered the war. It was made by 
treating carbolic acid with a mixture of sulphuric and 
nitric acids; we had to develop a carbolic-acid in- 
dustry to supply the demand from this and other 



146 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

sources that had formerly been filled from Germany. 
Then the Division of Chemical Warfare devised a 
combination of chlorin and picric acid, known as 
chlor-picrin, which answered the same purpose in 
warfare as the early German gases, in that it put men 
out of action without necessarily killing them unless 
they were exposed to it for a long time. 

There is no particular use in industry for the 511 
tons of chlor-picrin we had left on hand when the war 
ended, but the picric-acid industry, now firmly es- 
tablished in America, is of great value. Picric acid 
was not used as an explosive until very recently; 
as a dyestuff it has been known for 150 years. It is, 
in fact, the very first of the synthetic chemical dyes 
to have become commercially successful. With an 
ample supply of picric acid available, the yellow dyes 
for which the world was formerly dependent upon 
Germany can now be made in America; with the 
utilization of other products which the war com- 
pelled us to learn to make, it may fairly be said that 
we are already independent of Germany in the matter 
of dyes. 

Most valuable of all the products of the Edgewood 
Arsenal in its peace applications, as well as constituting 
in its production a distinct economic triumph, is 
phosgene. In point of military effectiveness phosgene 
ranks between chlor-picrin and mustard gas; it is 
the gas of which the largest quantity was used by 
the Germans, and when the armistice was signed the 
United States had the largest plant in the world for 
its manufacture and 1,308,000 pounds of this gas on 
hand. Its name, phosgene, is of Greek derivation 
and signifies "light-born"; it is made by combining 
chlorin and carbon monoxid in sunlight. 

At Edgewood Arsenal the chemists drawn into the 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 147 

service from the Bureau of Mines and from all the 
universities and chemical research laboratories of 
America to work under the direction of Col. William 
H. Walker, who left the chair of chemical engineering 
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to take 
command of gas production, devised and installed 




GENERAL VIEW OF THE EDGEWOOD ARSENAL NEAR BALTIMORE WHERE 
GAS-SHELLS WERE LOADED 



new processes for the production of carbon monoxid 
and its combination with chlorin to make phosgene, 
and produced enormous quantities of the latter at a 
cost of less than fifteen cents a pound. This is less 
than one-tenth of the former commercial price of 
phosgene, which has long played an important part 
in the dyestufl industry and used to sell in quantities 
for $1.50 a pound. 

"A value to the United States equal at least to the 
whole cost of the Chemical Warfare Division for the 
period of the war can be credited to the cheap and 
simple method of producing phosgene developed at 
Edgewood Arsenal," said an officer who is a chemical 



i 4 8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

engineer when not in uniform. "The government 
has distributed samples of phosgene large enough to 
be used commercially to a large number of industrial 
concerns, together with complete detailed formulas. 
Nothing could be more helpful in the establishment on 
a permanent basis of the dye industry than to have 
this knowledge available." 

Phosgene is the basis of a wide variety of colors. 
Numberless greens, brilliant scarlet, yellows, violets, 
and blues are all made by means of aniline combina- 
tions with phosgene in different proportions and ways. 
It also has the property of attacking iron oxid and 
utterly absorbing it. Brickwork at the Edgewood 
Arsenal has been bleached almost white where phos- 
gene has come in contact with the iron oxid which 
gives ordinary bricks their red color. Another ex- 
tremely important use of this gas is in destroying 
the brownish tones of glass, due to the presence of 
minute quantities of iron oxid in the sand from which 
the glass was made. Part of the success of American 
glass-makers in producing a clear optical glass for 
photographic and other lenses was due to the use of 
phosgene for this purpose. 

Besides the gases already referred to, the two 
thousand expert chemists and ten thousand and more 
soldiers and special employees who took part in the 
work of the "offensive" section of the Chemical 
Warfare Division devised ways for producing on an 
unprecedented scale such interesting commodities as 
white phosphorus, which bursts into flame on the 
least contact with dampness — even ordinary damp 
air — and gives off an intense white smoke, used for 
filling incendiary and smoke bombs; stannic tetra- 
chlorid, the product for which we were all urged to 
save tin, a gas that was found most effective for driv- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 149 



ing Boches out of their dugouts, and titanium tetra- 
chlorid, equally lethal. Note the "chlor" syllables 
in the names of all of these gases, indicating chlorin 
as part of their composition, and their derivation from 
common salt. White phosphorus is made from bones 
after they have 
been boiled to ex- 
tract all the gelati- 
nous matter for 
glue. We had 
1,320,000 pounds 
of this material 
on hand when 
the war ended, 
606,000 pounds of 
stannic chlorid, 
and 306,000 
pounds of titan- 
ium tetrachlorid. 
The three last- 
named chemicals 
were made in out- 
side laboratories 
and shipped to 
the Edgewood Ar- 
senal to be placed 
in shells and 
bombs for ship- 
ment overseas. Nothing could be more ingenious 
or effective than the immense, almost completely 
automatic plants for filling shells with these deadly 
chemicals. There were no precedents to go by. 
Everything had to be designed from the blank 
paper before construction could be even begun, but 

so effective was the machinery, when once installed, 
11 




A HORSE GAS-MASK 

It is easier to protect horses than men. The horse 
never breathes through his mouth. Horses have sur- 
vived mustard gas after several hours' exposure. 



iSo YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

that nearly two hundred thousand shells, bombs, and 
grenades were being filled every week when the war 
ended. Every precaution that human ingenuity could 
devise was installed to make it possible to do this 
work with the least possible risk to the man en- 
gaged; nevertheless, it was so difficult to obtain 
civilian help that finally it was all, or practically all 
done by soldiers detailed for the purpose. 

Here are some figures from the confidential records 
of the War Department that give perhaps as im- 
pressive an idea as can be obtained of the full scope 
and extent of our gas-warfare preparations. Whei 
the armistice was signed we had on hand, finishec 
and loaded, or ready for loading, 1,556,886 75- 
millimeter gas-shells; 92,496 gas-shells for 4.7-inch 
guns; 629,910 gas-shells for 155-millimeter guns am 
howitzers; 739,854 hand-grenades filled with stannic 
tetrachlorid, and besides a miscellaneous supply o 
other kinds of gas-shells and bombs and gas-projectors 
there were ready for use 48,349 gas-shells for 8- 
inch seacoast guns. And on this later item hangs 
one of the war secrets that could not be disclosec 
while hostilities were in progress. 

It was not until after the end of the war that it 
was learned that 14 -inch navy guns on railroac 
mounts had been used by the American forces on 
the western front. Then it was announced that the 
navy's experiment with these guns had been so suc- 
cessful that the army had in readiness or preparation 
a considerable number of large-caliber guns mountec 
on railroad trucks for use in the spring campaign 
Still later it was revealed that these 8 -inch sea- 
coast guns were to be used to hurl the largest gas- 
shells ever made twelve or fifteen miles, if neec 
be, and the charge of lewisite each shell wouk 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 151 

carry would literally wipe out an entire regiment 
of Germans. 

Originally designed for coast defense, these guns 
are of high power and long range. Mounted on rail- 
way trucks, they can be moved quickly from point 
to point behind the lines, and the mounting is so 
designed that the gun is ready to fire within five min- 
utes after arriving at the designated spot. It does not 
take a very vivid imagination to picture the havoc 
that half a dozen well-placed shots from one of these 
weapons, the shells charged with the most deadly gas 
yet devised, would have worked on the German morale. 

Our government possessed even a more efficient 
means than this, however, for smothering the Ger- 
mans with poison gas. This was the automatic air- 
plane, a device which was kept so secret that even 
six months after the signing of the armistice only a 
few of the higher officials of the War Department 
knew of its existence and most of these did not under- 
stand the principle by which it operated. Only one 
of these machines was built, but its success proved the 
possibility of constructing cheaply and speedily a 
fleet of airplanes the flight of which can be controlled 
without having a human being on board, and which 
can be relied upon to drop bombs of poison gas at a 
distance of fifty or one hundred miles from their 
starting-point and to drop them within half a mile of 
the point previously determined upon as the objective ! 

A bomb is not likely to be efficient at the range of 
half a mile; bombs of such effectiveness would make 
too heavy a load for any but the largest aircraft. 
The lewisite gas, however, has a range limited only 
by the direction and velocity of the wind with rela- 
tion to the point where it is set free. Half a dozen 
lewisite gas-bombs weighing three hundred pounds 



152 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

or so each, exploded to windward of the city of Berlin, 
would have killed the entire population of the German 
capital. And by the use of the automatic airplane 
for dropping these bombs, all danger to the attacking 
force would be eliminated. The worst that could 
happen would be to have the 'planes themselves 
brought down by the enemy, who would get the sur- 
prise of his life when the lewisite gas began to cir- 
culate in his vicinity. 

The automatic airplane was a development under 
army direction of the navy's "aerial torpedo," de- 
signed for dropping high-explosive bombs upon hostile 
war-ships. The conception of an airplane guided 
automatically by means of a gyroscope originated with 
Elmer E. Sperry, the American inventor of the gyro- 
scopic compass and the gyroscopic stabilizer for ships ; 
an airplane equipped with a stabilizer of this type 
flew without control around the Eiffel Tower before 
the war. When the war ended Mr. Sperry had de- 
veloped an aerial torpedo entirely controlled by gyro- 
scopes, intended for navy use, while the army had 
adapted it for overland purposes by combining with 
the Sperry gyroscope the Wright stabilizer, invented 
by Orville Wright, consisting of pendulums so at- 
tached that any deviation of the plane from a normal 
flying angle automatically adjusts the ailerons and 
elevators and the craft is thus brought back into a 
normal course. Mr. Wright had flown over a circular 
course for more than an hour with a machine so 
equipped, without touching the controls, a year or so 
before the war. The apparatus was mounted in a 
very small and simple airplane and connected with 
a timing mechanism operated by clockwork and de- 
signed to turn the 'plane around and bring it back 
to its starting-point after a given number of hours 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 153 

and minutes; this timing mechanism was also designed 
to operate the trigger of a release mechanism for drop- 
ping a bomb or a series of bombs at a predetermined 
moment. It could be so adjusted that the machine 
would fly around a mountain, if necessary. 

Numerous experimental flights proved the entire 
practicability of this device; the most spectacular of 
them demonstrated that the machine so equipped 
had automatic stability in the air beyond anything 
its makers had dreamed of. 

The machine was sent up at the Wright flying-field 
near Dayton. It had flown but a short distance when 
a sudden gust of wind caught it and the control 
mechanism became jammed for a moment. To the 
alarm of the spectators, the nose of the 'plane pointed 
straight up into the air; it paused there a moment as 
if about to drop in a tail spin; then, as gracefully as 
Vedrines himself ever did it, it "looped the loop" and 
resumed its horizontal course. But in "looping the 
loop" the clockwork control mechanism fell out. It 
had not been thought necessary to anchor it in place. 
So instead of coming back, after making a short turn 
over the neighboring countryside, the machine swung 
wide in a great circle over the city of Dayton. Back 
it came toward the flying-field and once more around, 
a mile high in the air, its creators on the ground 
watching in helpless wonder as Frankenstein must 
have watched the monster his inventive genius had 
involved. Four times the uncontrolled 'plane circled 
over the city and back to the flying-field, until, having 
traveled more than one hundred miles alone in the 
air and its gasolene-tank being emptied, it glided earth- 
ward and landed with a crash in a near-by field. 

When those in charge of the experiment hurried to 
the spot they found a crowd of farmers and officers 



154 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

trying to lift the machine off the ground in order to 
rescue the aviators who were supposed to be buried 
in the wreckage. For a moment there was great 
danger that the secret of the automatic airplane 
would leak out, until one of the observers with rare 
presence of mind announced that the pilot had made 
a parachute jump just before the crash! 

Although this device was perfected too late to be 
of use before hostilities ceased, the fact of its ex- 
istence gives added weight to the words of General 
Gouraud, the famous French commander, who has 
declared that, brutal and savage as was the Great 
War, the next war will be even more brutal and 
savage. It would be difficult, however, to imagine a 
more potent discourager of war than the knowledge 
that the enemy possesses such weapons and resources 
as lewisite gas and the automatic airplane. If, in 
addition to the enormously valuable contributions to 
peaceful industry which I have indicated, America's 
preparations for chemical warfare prove a deterrent 
of future wars, they will have easily been worth all 
they have cost us. 



IX 

A REVOLUTION IN SHIP-BUILDING 

WHEN the United States declared war on Ger- 
many the German submarines were sinking 
merchant-ships faster than all the yards of Great 
Britain, the United States, and the rest of the world 
could build them. It was patent at a glance that it 
would be perfectly useless for us to raise, train, and 
equip armies unless there were ships available to 
take them across to France, and to transport the 
enormous quantities of supplies which would be 
needed. 

To the question, "What can America provide that 
will be of the greatest value to the Allies?" put to 
Premier Lloyd George of Great Britain, the answer 
came back without an instant's hesitation: 

"Ships, ships, and more ships!" 

How we were going to supply ships was a problem 
for which no answer seemed to be in sight. Once 
the foremost ship-building nation in the world, with 
our fast sailing packets flying the gridiron flag in 
every port of the seven seas, we had almost forgotten 
the art of ship construction. When the iron ship 
began to replace the wooden vessel, steam to crowd 
out sails, and the screw propeller to displace paddle- 
wheels, we were busy with a Civil War; by the time 
we began to recover from it Great Britain had de- 
veloped the ship-building industry to a point where 



156 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

competition seemed impossible. We of America de- 
cided to let her keep it and invest our capital in other 
forms of industry. 

To-day the United States government is the largest 
ship-owner in the world. On April 6, 191 7, there were 
but 61 shipyards in the United States, of which only 
37 were equipped to build steel ships; when the armis- 
tice was signed there were 341 yards, which were 
building ships for the government on 1,284 ways, as 
compared with 142 available ways in 191 7. Gigantic 
new shipyards owned by the government were built, 
five of them for steel and seven for concrete ships; 
from these and privately owned yards 496 new ships 
with an aggregate dead-weight tonnage of 2,828,781 
had been added to our merchant fleet; 399 of these 
were of steel. There had been launched 285 more ships 
and the keels had been laid for 743 more. What with 
the German and Austrian ships seized and other 
foreign-owned and American ships chartered, there 
were, by September 1, 1918, under the control of the 
government, 1,656 vessels with a total dead- weight 
tonnage of 7,219,823. 

New ships were being delivered at a rate rapidly 
climbing above 400,000 tons a month, and there were 
contracts outstanding for 1,475 ships, aggregating 
10,835,491 tons, with every assurance that these ships 
could and would be built and delivered on schedule 
time. 

From less than 45,000 men employed in the ship- 
building yards of America, more than 380,000 were 
so employed when the war came to an end; in the 
boiler and engine works and other industries allied 
to the ship-building trade were another quarter of a 
million. 

On July 4, 1918, the United States of America 




THE GUN THAT BEAT THE HUN 

The pneumatic riveter, known to shipyard workers as the "air-gun," is a Yankee 
invention that alone made possible our great ship-building program. 



iS8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

celebrated its one hundred and forty-second birthday 
by launching in a single day more seagoing ships 
than had ever been launched from our shores be- 
fore in a whole year. Ninety-six vessels, having a 
total capacity of nearly half a million tons, went 
overboard. Besides this enormous tonnage of mer- 
chant-shipping there were many launchings of de- 
stroyers and other naval craft. 

To establish in such an incredibly short time an 
industry of such gigantic size from such a trivial 
beginning meant the development of new methods of 
building ships. It meant that new ways, too, had to 
be found to train ship-builders, since we had no con- 
siderable body of workers who had ever had anything 
whatever to do with any phase of ship construction. 
Ships are now built by the same distinctively Amer- 
ican method of manufacture that we have become 
familiar with in the production of automobiles and 
a thousand other articles, the method which is 
America's most important contribution to the world's 
industry, known as "quantity production." 

Quantity production, whether of shoes or ships or 
sealing-wax, means, first, deciding on a single size, 
type, or design of product to be made in a particular 
plant, then fabricating the parts that go into that prod- 
uct in quantities exactly alike, so that when assembled 
there will be no essential difference between any two 
of the finished articles, and doing all of this with 
machinery specially designed for the purpose and so 
automatic in its operation that even the unskilled 
laborer can perform the necessary manual operations. 
That is precisely the plan followed in our entire ship- 
building program. For the first time in the history 
of the art, ships exactly alike in every detail were and 
still are being built by identical methods, from iden- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 159 

tical plans, out of parts fabricated in quantity, hun- 
dreds, even thousands of miles from the yards where 
they are assembled. There are several different sizes 
of these standard ships, but all of the 5,500-ton ships 



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THE SHIP THAT WAS BUILT IN TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS 
View of the Tuckahoe on the third day, showing floors in place. 



are alike, all the 7,500-ton ships are interchangeable 
in every part, each with the other, all the 10,000-ton 
craft contain the same number, size, and shape of 
parts. This had never happened before. Even when 
ships have been built from identical plans, so much 



160 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

of the ' ' fairing ' ' of the lines has been left to the engi- 
neer or marine architect in charge of construction that 
the finished ships would differ, as in the case of the 
Lusitania and Mauretania, sister ships that differed 
in length, in beam, and in other dimensions. The 
Olympic was in commission a year and more before 
the Titanic was launched, but it was not until the 
Titanic was actually afloat that the builders were 
able to tell her exact length and draft, which differed 
substantially from the Olympic. 

Now every beam, angle-bar, plate, or other part of 
a standard ship is finished at the fabricating plant, 
even down to the correct bevel of the edges and the 
punching of the innumerable rivet-holes. Speed in 
ship-building, as well as economy of cost, is made 
possible by the fact that when these parts reach the 
yards there is nothing to do but to rivet them together. 

Building a modern steel ship is, after all, different 
in no essential particular from building a bridge or 
a skyscraper. A steel ship does not depend for 
rigidity upon the strength of the keel, as does the old- 
fashioned wooden ship, but upon the proper construc- 
tion of its entire frame, exactly as does a bridge. 
It is really, from an engineering viewpoint, merely 
an inclosed girder, built of structural steel shapes and 
plates riveted together and covered with a skin or 
"shell," as the ship-builders term the outer sheathing, 
of steel plates riveted to each other and to the frames. 
These plates may be anywhere from five-eighths of an 
inch to an inch or more thick, depending on the size 
of the ship and where they are used; the bottom 
plates are the heaviest. 

When one considers that in a 5,000-ton steel ship 
there are something like half a million rivets, in a 
7,500-ton craft nearer a million, the part the riveter 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 161 

plays in the assembling of the ship is of manifest im- 
portance. The plates and beams that form the keel 
have to be riveted together. To these are riveted the 
"floors," the transverse members that form the frame 
of the bottom of the ship and extend crosswise from 
the keel; these may be as much as five feet high on 




THE "TUCKAHOE" ON THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY 

All ready for launching, upper works finished, engines installed, even the anchors 

in place. 



i6 2 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

a large ship. To the ends of the floors are riveted 
the frames ; the deck-beams are riveted to the frames, 
and the decks to the beams ; then the bulkheads have 
to be riveted to beams, frames, and floors, the outer 
skin or shell riveted on, a plate at a time, each plate 
secured to each other plate where it joins at the ends 
by a row of three rivets, along its edges by a double 
row of rivets to the adjoining row or "strake" of 
plates, and wherever it crosses a frame, floor, or beam, 
riveted fast with a close row of rivets. The rule in 
steel ship-building is, "Wherever two pieces of steel 
touch, rivet them." Then there is the inside skin, or 
' ' cieling, "to be riveted into place, the deck openings 
to be strengthened by the riveted hatch coamings, or 
" strongbacks, " and by this time there are not more 
than ten or fifteen thousand more rivets to be driven 
for the tanks, shaft-tunnel, deck-houses, and other 
parts of the ship, without counting those that hold 
the boilers together. 

When it is considered, also, that practically every 
rivet must be water-tight in its hole and hold the plates 
together with a water-tight pressure, and that for 
tanks they must also be oil-tight, it looks like a job 
for skilled workmen. But the "air-gun," as every 
shipyard worker calls the pneumatic hammer, en- 
ables unskilled men to become expert riveters in a 
short time. It strikes a thousand blows a minute 
on the nose of a red-hot rivet with the force of one 
hundred pounds behind every blow. 

When the "boys" at the Port Newark yards of 
the Submarine Boat Corporation got to discussing, 
late in March, 1918, just how many rivets, were really 
a good day's work for the standard "gang," composed 
of riveter, "passer-up, " and "heater- boy," they little 
dreamed they were inaugurating a new form of in- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 163 

ternational sporting contest that would prove to be 
as important, at least, if not as prominent a feature 
for the society page, as polo, yacht-racing, tennis, or 
golf. 

In three months the title of champion riveter of 




VIEW OF THE WOODEN SHIP ABERDEEN TAKEN FORTY-NINE HOURS 
AFTER "THE KEEL WAS LAID, SHOWING STERN IN PLACE 



the world crossed the Atlantic three times, was held 
by an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman, and 
by three different Americans. 

Four hundred rivets a day was regarded as a good 
day's job, on straightaway work in easily accessible 
positions, as on the frames of a ship, where the riveter 
and the "passer-up" or "holder-on" can work to- 



164 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

gether like one man. Some of the Port Newark boys 
thought it might be possible to get six hundred or 
even more a day. Others disagreed, and immediately 
it became apparent that there existed that difference 
of opinion without which, Mark Twain says, there 
could be no horse-races. Bets were accordingly made, 
and, greatly to the surprise even of the winning gang, 
a record of 836 rivets for a nine-hour day was made. 
A few days later another gang in the same yard topped 
the thousand mark. The men in other shipyards 
heard of these performances, scoffed at first, then 
tried it, and before the end of April several gangs had 
succeeded in driving about 2,000 standard seven- 
eighths-inch rivets in a single working-day. 

At the Baltimore Dry dock and Shipbuilding Cor- 
poration, "Finner" Shock, an expert riveter, heard 
of these records of 2,200 and 2,300 rivets a day. One 
day, with a picked team that had worked with him 
for months, he extended himself a bit and put 2,720 
"hot pins" in place in nine hours. Then he laid off 
for a day or two, and when he went back to the yards 
he found himself an international figure. The news 
of his performance had been cabled to England, re- 
ceived there with incredulity, and the British workers 
had been challenged to beat it. Pretty soon an Eng- 
lishman did beat it, topping the 3,000-mark in a yard 
on the Thames. The English papers crowed for 
forty-eight hours or so; then a Scotsman with an 
Irish name, working in the Dalmuir yards on the 
Clyde, stretched himself and drove a few more than 
4,300 rivets in a nine-hour day! 

"That will hold the Yankees for a while," the 
British remarked, and a London ship-builder wrote a 
letter to The Daily Mail offering a prize of £25 
to any riveter, bar none, who would beat the 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 165 

Scottish figure. Lord Northcliffe was named as the 
referee. 

Charles Knight, a colored riveter, who worked at 
the Bethlehem Steel Corporation's " Penn-Mary " 




THE WOODEN SHIP "ABERDEEN" 
Built and ready for launching in seventeen days from the laying of the keel. 

plant at Sparrow's Point, near Baltimore, heard of 
that Scottish record. Also his eye caught the notice 
of a . fifty-dollar bonus for the first riveter in the 
Sparrow's Point yards who would top it. He and his 
gang put in a couple of easy days practising team- 

12 



1 66 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

work, just to get limbered up, and then told the fore- 
man that if it was a good day to-morrow they reck- 
oned they'd go after that record, if he'd be kind 
enough to let them work on some of the hatch strong- 
backs that were waiting to be riveted up. The fore- 
man agreed, the weather was clear, and in the pres- 




INSIDE THE HULL OF THE ABERDEEN 
The record-breaking wooden ship, looking toward the bow. 

ence of officials of the company and of the Emergency 
Fleet Corporation, Charles and his gang drove 4,472 
seven- eighths rivets in nine hours! 

"Jus' cable that news to King Gawge, please, suh," 
grinned Charles, as he laid down his air-gun. The 
news was cabled, and back came a cable from Lord 
Northcliffe authorizing Chairman Hurley of the Ship- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 167 

ping Board to award the £25 prize to Charles Knight. 
With the bonus and the extra pay the day's work 
netted $277 for Charles and his gang. The customary 
distribution is 50 per cent, to the riveter, 30 per cent, 
to the "passer-up," and 20 per cent, to the "heater- 
boy"; but Charles used an extra man, so he had 
both a "passer-up" and a "holder-on," and had to 




a "close-up" of the air-gun 

divide a little differently. It was fair wages for a 
day's work, however. 

This performance put the Britishers on their mettle 
and set the American shipyard men to looking for 
a "white hope" who could beat Knight's record. 
The white hope appeared in the person of John Corri- 
gan, at the Wyandotte yards of the American Ship- 
building Company. John cut loose one day early in 
June, and when the day's score was tallied it showed 
7,028 "hot pins"! But even while this was being 
cabled triumphantly to England word came from 
Belfast, heralding John Mowry, a veteran workman 
of the Harlan and Wolff yards, as world's champion, 
and a day or two later John Moir, in the same yards, 
claimed and was accorded the incredible performance 



1 68 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

of 1 1,209 standard seven-eighths rivets in the floors of 
a standard ship in a nine-hour working- day! 

Of course these records were made under excep- 
tional circumstances, and while they had a noticeable 
effect in speeding up riveting generally, they proved 
not the best way of stimulating rivalry for effective 
production increase. The Shipping Board worked 
out a competitive plan, based on the average perform- 
ance per gang per hour for a month. This gave the 
big yard with 250 or more riveting-gangs no better 
chance than the little yard with only a few gangs. 
A blue pennant was awarded every month to the 
yard making the best record the previous month, 
and men working in the winning yard won the right 
to wear specially designed badges. Under the stimulus 
of this and other forms of carefully fostered friendly 
rivalry between yards and between different gangs 
in the same yard, steel ships were built faster than 
any one had ever dreamed it could be done. 

To train riveters, schools were opened at the ship- 
yard. Perfectly green workers learned the art in a 
surprisingly short time. Three "rookies," none of 
whom had ever driven a rivet before he went to work 
in the yard, after six weeks of training drove in an 
eight -hour day 2,803 rivets, of which only twelve failed 
to pass the inspectors. One recruit, who had never seen 
a shipyard before he went to Hog Island, drove 867 
seven-eighths rivets, flush, in the side shell of a ship 
in a single day after three months' experience. An- 
other, after seven days' instruction in the school and 
three weeks in the yard, drove 1,327 three-quarter- 
inch rivets, flush, in a day. Ninety per cent, of all 
the riveting at Hog Island was done by men who 
had never handled an air-gun until they went to work 
there. 




THE PRODUCT OF HOG ISLAND 

Standard steel ship of 7,500 tons, built by the Emergency Fleet Corporation. 



mur? if _jb.Jp 



m „.> 



THE "SAGAPONACK" 

One of the standard 7,soo-ton steel cargo ships turned out at Hog Island. 



170 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

Riveting is not all there is to ship-building. First 
the steel must be "placed," each beam and plate lifted 
by overhead cranes and firmly fastened with bolts 
run through rivet-holes into the exact position where 
it is to be permanently fastened with rivets. The 
spirit of rivalry in "placing" was also stimulated in 
the yards. Such feats as laying the keel of a ship, 
containing 200.05 tons of steel, in 7^2 hours proved 
a spur to emulation. By such methods steel-ship 
production was speeded up and moved up to the end 
of the war with increasing momentum. All fear of 
an insufficient supply of skilled labor vanished. And 
in the wooden-ship field the tradition that only 
trained ship-carpenters could build them was ex- 
ploded. There was found to be not the slightest 
difficulty in training average intelligent workmen to 
put wooden ships together, while pneumatic hammers 
and drills greatly lessened the work of making the 
holes for the four-foot steel drift-bolts that hold the 
six-inch planks to one another, and for the black locust 
treenails or "trunnels" that pin them to the ribs, and 
in driving these home. 

Up to the signing of the armistice the total number 
of wooden ships added to the American merchant 
marine since the United States went into the war was 
eighty-four with an aggregate dead-weight tonnage of 
298,200. Fifty of these ships were built to the designs 
of the two young engineers, Hough and Ferris, whose si- 
multaneous conception of the wooden ship as a cheap, 
quick, and efficient way to get tonnage and lots of it 
was one of the most radical, yet practical, contribu- 
tions toward the winning of the war. Neither Hough 
nor Ferris was a ship-builder, but each was a con- 
struction engineer who recognized that modern ship- 
building is neither an occult mystery nor a work of 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 171 

art. Each of them, without knowledge that any one 
else was doing the same thing, worked out a design 
for wooden ships that could be quickly put together 
out of practically green lumber, and would serve 
every purpose of a ship. That is to say, they would 




A RECORD-BREAKING JOB AND THE MEN WHO DID IT 

Eighty full frames of this wooden ship were set in thirty-four working-hours at 

Portland, Oregon. 



172 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

float, would hold a lot of cargo, could be propelled 
by their own engines, and were designed with due 
regard to possible stresses and strains, viewed from 
an engineer's standpoint. Speaking in engineering 
terms, a ship is merely a box girder; if it is strong 
enough to bear its own weight and that of its cargo 
when suspended at either end, as it often must be 
when the waves are running high, it is a good-enough 
ship for emergency purposes. The wooden ships 
built as a war emergency measure are really better 
than that description would imply; how long they 
will last, however, depends upon many conditions 
that cannot be determined, in advance. There are 
wooden ships afloat that are more than one hundred 
years old and still giving good service; one was recently 
overhauled in Norway and put back into trans-at- 
lantic service that is more than two hundred years old. 
Hough and Ferris went to Washington, each with 
his design for a wooden ship. The then chairman of 
the Shipping Board, Edward Denman, was greatly 
impressed with their project, and it was immediately 
adopted by the board. Then General Goethals was 
detailed to direct the building of ships, as head of 
the Emergency Fleet Corporation. General Goethals 
could not see the wooden ship, except as a trivial 
and unimportant by-product. He did not think it 
good policy to spend time and energy building ships 
of such perishable stuff; steel and concrete, such as 
he used in the Panama Canal, were good enough for 
him. The board was insistent, the general rebellious. 
In the same speech in which he expressed his convic- 
tion that boards were uniformly "long and narrow 
and made of wood," he remarked that the birds were 
still nesting in the trees from which he was expected 
to build wooden ships. The resultant publicity was 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 173 

followed by the dismissal of both Denman and 
Goethals by the President. The wooden ships have 
been built, however. General Goethals was right — 
the. birds were nesting in the trees from which the 
ships launched less than a year later were constructed. 
He was wrong only in assuming the project to be 
impractical. Nor are these ships built of green lum- 
ber. The same Forest Service method of kiln-drying 
lumber in two weeks that made possible the enormous 
production of spruce for airplanes was availed of for 
ship-building as well. 

Substantially all of the wooden ships are of the 
same size — 3,500 dead- weight tons. The largest are 
4,700-tonners, built at Orange, Texas. The great 
majority of the wooden ships were built, naturally, 
on the northern Pacific coast, where timber of sizes 
suitable for ship construction is plentiful. In all, 
508 keels for wooden ships had been laid and 227 
hulls launched when the armistice was signed. Not 
all of these were completed as steamships; when the 
war emergency had passed it was regarded as more 
economical to fit some of them out as sailing-ships 
and use some of the hulls as barges. 

The spirit of competition was invoked to speed up 
the wood-ship builders, too. While there is no op- 
portunity for such spectacular performances as were 
made by the champion rivet-drivers, there was room 
for rivalry between yards and between gangs in single 
yards in such matters as speed in keel-laying and 
frame-erecting. 

The keel of a Ferris-type ship consists of five large 
timbers, laid end to end, dovetailed and bolted to- 
gether. As soon as a ship was off the ways it became 
a point of pride to get a new keel, the timbers for which 
had already been sawed and cut to shape, laid and 



174 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

bolted up as quickly as possible. A Pacific yard did 
this in 20 minutes and boasted about it; at the next 
launching at an Eastern yard this time was cut to 
10 minutes; another followed with a record of 6}4 
minutes ; soon that record was cut to 90 seconds by a 
Savannah yard, and a later report from the same yard 
gave the incredible time of 11 seconds for a keel- 
laying! 

Erecting the frames, also, is an operation that per- 
mits of speed records. A Pacific yard started this 
sport by putting up the complete set of frames for 
a hull in 44 working-hours; to occupy the spare time 
left after this performance they did half a day's work 
of planking in an hour. A few days later the same 
yard set up the entire set of 80 frames in 34 hours, 
and crowed so loudly about it that one of the Gulf 
yards took a hand and did the same trick in 30 hours 
and 35 minutes. Even this record was bettered later. 



X 

SOME EXTRAORDINARY SHIP-BUILDING FEATS 

YANKEE ingenuity and resourcefulness in ship- 
building did not exhaust itself with the construc- 
tion by novel methods and unheard-of speed of the 
steel and wooden ships referred to in the previous 
chapter. We built composite ships, wooden planking 
on steel frames. We performed the unheard-of feat 
of biiilding huge ocean-going, cargo-carrying, 5,000-ton 
ships out of stone — for concrete is, after all, simply 
artificial stone. I have told how we trained unskilled 
men into the fastest riveters in the world, but at the 
signing of the armistice we were beginning to fasten 
the steel plates of ships together by electric-welding 
devices operated by women! And there is nothing 
more typically illustrative of Yankee ingenuity than 
the methods resorted to for building ocean-going ships 
a thousand miles from the ocean and floating them 
from the Great Lakes to the seaboard, even though 
they were twice as long as the locks of the Welland 
Canal ! 

In the shipyards of Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, 
Chicago, and Duluth steel cargo -ships six and seven 
hundred feet long and having cargo capacities up to 
twenty thousand tons had been built for years. Every 
one of these ships, however, was confined to a cruising 
radius of 1,500 miles, the distance between Tona- 
wanda on the Niagara River above the Falls and the 



176 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

Duluth-Superior port at the head of Lake navigation. 
While there are two water connections between the 
upper Lakes and Lake Ontario, the larger of these, the 
Welland Canal, with its series of forty-four locks, like 
a flight of stairs, will admit the passage of no ship 
larger than 260 feet in length, 44 feet beam, and 
14 feet draught. There had been, a number of 
years ago, a half-dozen or more ships cut in two and 
towed through the canal in separate halves, after- 
ward being patched together at one of the Lake On- 
tario or St. Lawrence River ports. It was regarded, 
however, as a hazardous experiment, and there was a 
feeling among shipping-men that the operation weak- 
ened the vessel and tended to render it unseaworthy. 

So pressing was the need for merchant tonnage, 
however, that it was obviously wasteful to let the huge 
ship-building capacity of the Great Lakes yards re- 
main unutilized in the emergency. They were put to 
work at once on the construction of ships of dimensions 
that would pass through the Welland Canal locks, 
but as it speedily became apparent that the greatest 
need was for larger ships, which are much more 
economical in their operation, the attention of the 
Emergency Fleet Corporation and the ship-builders 
engaged in this work was focused on the devising of 
safe and certain methods of cutting these Lake 
freighters in two and then fastening the two halves 
together again on the lower Lakes. 

At one time, in Detroit, I saw three different classes 
of ocean-going ships in process at one time. One 
big Lake carrier was being fitted with the water-tight 
bulkheads, higher freeboard, and stouter upper works 
required for ocean craft, preliminary to being sawed in 
two amidships for transportation through the canal 
locks; at an adjoining yard steel freighters of 4,200 



i78 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

tons dead-weight capacity, the very largest ships that 
could be taken through the locks intact, were being 
built, while at the third yard they were building ships 
260 feet long, each of which was equipped with an 
additional one hundred feet of midship section- 
keel, frames, beams, and plates — so that on reaching 
sea-level it could be taken into dry-dock, cut apart, 
and lengthened by one hundred feet. 

One of the greatest difficulties in the way of utilizing 
the big Lake carriers for ocean service was the absence 
of dry-dock facilities at the lower Lake ports of 
Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec. While it has been 
done, it is a risky operation to attempt to tow half a 
steamship out through the Gulf of St. Lawrence and 
down the Atlantic coast to an American seaport. 
But there were only two dry-docks available in the 
St. Lawrence River, and they could handle only about 
four ships a year between them. The problem, then, 
was to devise a method of rejoining the two halves 
of a bisected ship without putting it in dry-dock. 
There were plenty of docks on the upper Lakes where 
they could be cut apart and temporary bulkheads 
placed in the open ends of the severed halves. In- 
deed, some ships were taken through the canal with 
the open ends filled with water, no temporary bulk- 
heads being necessary. 

The problem was turned over to E. A. Eustis, a 
special agent of the United States Shipping Board and 
an expert ship-builder, having headquarters in Cleve- 
land. Skilled engineers were called in and a method 
was devised by which twelve of the largest Lake ships 
were reunited while floating in the harbor of Mon- 
treal. Each of these ships was cut in two on the upper 
Lakes, the separate halves "stepped down" through 
the Welland Canal, and when the two halves were 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 179 

brought together the ship was in every respect as 
strong as before, and in the opinion of some engineers 
even stronger. The method consisted of placing 
temporary frames of six-by-six-inch angle-irons around 




CUTTING A LAKE SHIP IN TWO PREPARATORY TO TAKING IT TO SALT 

WATER 

Showing the Frontenac being pulled apart at Cleveland. 



both sections of the ship at the point where it was cut 
in two, in such a way that they could be closely brought 
together when the ship was rejoined. These angle- 
irons were bored for two-inch fitted bolts. When the 
two sections of the ship were floated together each 
end was trimmed by water ballast until they were 
floating as nearly as possible at the same level. Then, 
by driving drift-pins through corresponding holes in 
the angle-irons of the two halves, they were held in 



i So YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the proper relative position while fitted bolts were in- 
serted and the ship thus held firmly together. Plates 
that had been removed in the sawing-in-two process 
were put on and refitted, down to the water-line. 
Then the ships were floated over a caisson ingen- 
iously devised so that it would fit closely around the 
hull at the two ends of the cut. When the water was 
pumped out of the caisson it pressed so firmly 
against the bottom and sides as to keep the 
water out from the midship section, so that men 
could work all the way under the ship in replacing 
plates, while the keel and floor-beams were strength- 
ened by heavy plates riveted on both sides. 

Still, the very largest Lake ships could not be 
brought down to the ocean even by this means, for 
while a ship more than five hundred feet long could 
pass through the Welland locks if sawed in two, the 
halves could not pass the locks if the ship were more 
than forty-four feet wide, the extreme width of the 
canal prism. This limited the size of Lake ships that 
could be brought to the ocean to vessels of about 
6,000 tons. Nevertheless, a way was found of 
bringing a 10,000-ton ship, the Charles R. Van Hise, 
through the Welland locks, although it was 460 feet 
long, 50 feet beam, and 33^2 feet deep. This was 
accomplished by first sawing the Van Hise in two 
across the middle, stopping the open ends of the cut 
with temporary bulkheads to make each half as 
buoyant as possible, and then turning each half on 
its side, so that the 50-foot dimension was not cross- 
ways of the lock, but vertical, and there was a width 
of only 33^ feet to clear the 44-foot width of the 
locks. This was a daring experiment; it is regarded 
by shipping-men as one of the most remarkable feats 
of engineering ever attempted. It was entirely sue- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 181 




FORWARD HALF OF THE CHARLES R. VAN HISE TURNED ON ITS SIDE 

SO THE 10,000-TON LAKE SHIP COULD BE FLOATED THROUGH THE 

WELLAND CANAL 



cessful, and had not the war come to an end within 
a few days after this had been done, there is no doubt 
that many more of the larger Lake carriers would have 
been brought into ocean service by the same means. 
Even more spectacular, from the ordinary lands- 
man's point of view, or, for that matter, from the view- 
point of the sailor, was the development and success 
of the concrete ship. Concrete as a ship-building 




TURNING THE AFTER HALF OF THE CHARLES R. VAN HISE ON THE 
SIDE FOR TOWING THROUGH THE WELLAND LOCKS FROM LAKE ERIE 
13 TO LAKE ONTARIO 



i8 2 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

material was not entirely unknown. Several years 
before the European war began a Baltimore concern 
built a number of harbor barges of concrete; in Nor- 
way a very small concrete steamship had been con- 
structed. That a reinforced-concrete ship of 5,000 
tons capacity could be built that would prove 
seaworthy in every respect was a matter of serious 
doubt in the minds of most ship-builders and engi- 
neers. The San Francisco Shipbuilding Company, 
however, decided soon after America's entry into the 
war to try the experiment. This first concrete ship 
was appropriately christened the Faith. She was 
built exactly the way a reinforced-concrete structure 
on land is built — that is, wooden molds were made 
for the inside and outside of the ship, steel reinforcing 
rods were put in place, and the liquid concrete poured 
into the mold. When it had hardened and set engines 
and boilers were installed, and the ship was launched. 
Even the uprights supporting the deck-beams, the 
beams, and the decks themselves were built of concrete. 
On her first voyage the Faith ran into a terrific 
storm off the Oregon coast, encountering weather 
which put the craft to the severest possible test. 
The ocean was swept by a ninety-mile gale, and most 
ships were tossed about like corks, but according to 
the officers and men of the Faith the craft rode on a 
practically even keel and did so little rolling that it 
was scarcely noticeable. On account of the weight 
of the ship, the waves broke over her instead of lift- 
ing her, and a water-tumbler on a shelf in the galley 
did not fall off during the worst of the storm. The 
Faith's first voyage was from San Francisco to Seattle, 
then back to San Francisco, then to Peru and Chile, 
then through the Panama Canal to Havana and to 
New York. 




BUILDING A CONCRETE SHIP IS MUCH LIKE BUILDING A CONCRETE 

BRIDGE 

First there must be constructed a mold for the outside shape and then the steel re- 
inforcements bent and wired in place. 




POURING THE CONCRETE INTO THE MOLD AND AROUND THE 
REINFORCEMENTS 

The result is a one-piece ship of artificial stone. 



i8 4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

So successful was this experiment that the Emer- 
gency Fleet Corporation immediately arranged for 
the construction of many more concrete ships. The 
second craft of this construction was the Atlantus, 
built at Brunswick, Georgia, of 3,000 tons capacity, 
being slightly more than 260 feet long. Lessons 
learned in the construction of the Faith were utilized 
in the building of these later concrete ships, and, 
surprising as it may seem, it was found that whereas 
a wooden ship of 3,000 tons has planking 19 inches 
thick, a 5 -inch concrete wall was sufficient and the 
resulting ship actually weighed less than a wooden 
ship of the same dimensions. The hull of the Atlantus 
was cast in one week's time. Chemical experts were 
engaged for research in the composition of cement, 
with the result that instead of the crushed stone and 
gravel usually used for concrete, a special aggregate 
produced by the burning of clay was adopted, with 
the resulting saving of more than 28 per cent, in 
weight. At the time of the signing of the armistice 
there were forty-two ocean-going concrete ships of near- 
ly 300,000 tons capacity under contract, and many of 
them under construction for the Emergency Fleet 
Corporation; many of these were of 7,500-tons 
capacity. 

So successful did the American development of the 
concrete ship prove that the British Admiralty en- 
couraged Scotch and English shipyards to work along 
similar lines, although no concrete craft built or laid 
down up to the close of the war approximated in 
size even the smallest of the American-built ships of 
this material. 

To put a 5,000-ton ship together requires about 
450,000 rivets; a 9,500-ton ship requires from 600,000 
to 700,000 rivets. Every rivet is a possible source of 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 185 

weakness; every rivet-hole a possible point of leakage. 
Ships have been known to scrape bottom and come 
off the bar uninjured except that they had sheared 




THE "PALO ALTO," FIRST CONCRETE SHIP OF ITS SI7E; IT IS OF 7,500 
DEAD-WEIGHT-TON CAPACITY 



off the rivet heads holding the bottom plates in place, 
and the bottoms literally dropped out of them on 
reaching deep water. For this reason the bottom 
rivets on battle-ships and many other naval craft 



1 86 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

are countersunk, so that the heads are flush with the 
plates. Moreover, the rivets in a 9,500-ton ship 
weigh 500 tons, and if they could be eliminated the 
ship could carry 500 tons more cargo. 

These are among the considerations that led engi- 
neers and electrical experts, early in America's program 
of ship construction, to study the problem of building 
steel ships by welding the plates together electrically. 
Electric welding is a distinctly American invention. 
Prior to the war it had gained an important place in 
many industries. It was obvious that if it could be 
applied successfully to ship construction, making the 
entire ship actually one solid piece of steel instead of 
a large number of pieces fastened together by rivets, 
there would be an enormous gain in strength and 
security, possibly in time of construction and of labor 
cost. Mr. A. J. Mason, of Chicago, Consulting En- 
gineer for the United States Shipping Board, whose 
previous inventions had given him a high standing 
among marine engineers, and Prof. Comfort A. Adams, 
of the faculty of Harvard University and the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology, chairman of the 
Electrical Engineering section of the National Re- 
search Council and president of the American Insti- 
tute of Electrical Engineers, were appointed on the 
Electric Consulting Committee by the Emergency 
Fleet Corporation, to investigate and propose methods 
of applying this process to ship construction. Sev- 
eral years before the war, a steel tugboat 60 feet long 
was built at Ashtabula, Ohio, by the electric process. 
This was the first electrically welded vessel of any 
size built in the world. In June, 19 18, there was 
launched in England a 275-ton barge built by the 
same process, and in the autumn of 191 8 work was 
besun at the yards of the Federal Shipbuilding Cor- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 187 




LAUNCHING THE 



'PALO ALTO, A 7,500-TON CONCRETE SHIP, AT 
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA 



poration at Kearney, New Jersey, on a 4 2 -foot mid- 
ship section for a 9,600-ton ship fastened together by 
electric spot welding instead of by rivets. 

There are two principal methods of electric welding. 
The "arc" welding process consists of bringing a 
wire about one-eighth of an inch in diameter into 
contact with the metal to be welded at the point 
where it is desired to join the two parts. A powerful 




ONE OF THE 3,000-TON CONCRETE SHIPS BUILT AT BRUNSWICK, GEOR- 
GIA, BY THE EMERGENCY FLEET CORPORATION 



1 88 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

electric current is passed through both the wire and 
the metal to be welded. The wire is then pulled away 
from the work and the electric current, jumping the 
gap, forms the arc and generates heat sufficient to 
melt the end of the wire and fuse the surface of the 
metal parts. The molten metal from the wire is 
deposited in the joint and fills it up, becoming an 
integral part of the plates or beams. 

It was by the use of the arc-welding process that 
the German ships taken over by the United States 
government on our participation in the war were re- 
paired and made useful at the end. Before surrender- 
ing the ships, the German crews cracked the cylinders 
of the engines, chiseled off the heads of rivets holding 
plates to frames, bent the piston rods, plugged up 
boiler flues, and in a hundred ways attempted to 
make it impossible for the ships to put to sea. They 
openly boasted that they had done such damage that 
the Yankees could never repair them. They honestly 
believed that only German workmen in German ship- 
yards could ever make these German ships seaworthy 
again. But in less than six months every one of the 
German ships, from the huge Vaterland, renamed the 
Leviathan, down to the smallest freighter, had been 
completely repaired, and in most cases the machinery 
was stronger and better than before. Cracked cylin- 
ders were made whole by the arc-welding process, 
which makes the joints stronger than the original 
metal, and at a minimum of cost in money and in 
time America had at command a huge fleet of pas- 
senger- and freight-ships which had once flown the 
German flag. 

The other method of electric welding is known as 
"spot" welding. This is purely an American process, 
and is applied to heavy plate-work. By means of a 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 189 




LAUNCHING A CONCRETE SHIP 

One of the 3,000-ton stone craft built for the Emergency Fleet Corporation at 
Brunswick, Georgia. 



powerful clamp exerting a pressure of about twenty- 
five tons the plates are secured together and an 
electric current passed through them at the point of 
highest pressure. The heat actually melts the two 
plates together. This is just like riveting, except that 
there is no punching of holes and there are no rivets. 
Instead of being continuous, this welding is done in 
spots, and is consequently known as "spot" welding. 



i 9 o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

It takes about fifteen seconds to weld two ship- 
plates together at each spot, and after considerable 
experimenting with the method devised by Mr. 
Mason, Professor Adams reported that practically 
everything done on a ship by rivets could be done 
by means of spot welding. Portable spot-welders for 
use in fastening plates to frames were devised, but 
the natural field for spot welding is in the fabrication- 
shop, where stationary spot-welders can be employed. 

One great advantage of welding over riveting is 
that while the work of riveting required great phys- 
ical strength, welding can be done by women as well 
as by men. Even one-armed men can do electric 
welding. At Hog Island, where an electric-welding 
class was established, one of the first pupils was a 
woman, Miss Sara A. Irwin, who took up the work 
and did actual ship construction. 

No record of Yankee ingenuity as applied to war- 
time ship-building would be complete without some 
mention of the unsinkable ship, the Lucia, which 
was sunk by a German submarine. Paradoxical as 
it may seem, it was the verdict of shipping experts 
that the Lucia, although sunk, was a successful demon- 
stration of a method of making ships unsinkable! 
The Lucia was a steel ship 418 feet long, 54 feet beam, 
with a dead-weight capacity of 10,650 tons. Inside 
the Lucia between the ribs or side-frames and in the 
spaces between the deck-beams were fitted 6,000 
water-tight wooden boxes, each 3 feet long, 2 feet 
wide, and 1 foot deep. Approximately the same num- 
ber of larger boxes were fitted into cargo space that 
would otherwise be left empty when the ship was 
carrying a full cargo of coal. These buoyancy boxes 
weighed 1,400 tons, but with the boxes in place she 
was able to carry a cargo of 8,179 tons. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 191 

The theory of the buoyancy boxes was that, no 
matter how large a hole was blown in the hull, the 
ship would still float. On the evening of October 
17,. 191 8, the Lucia was eastward bound across the 
Atlantic with four other vessels, but without a con- 
voy. A torpedo struck squarely in the engine-room 
section amidships, killing four men and injuring 
several others. The Lucia remained afloat for twenty- 




WOMEN SHIPYARD WORKERS LEARNING ELECTRO WELDING 

As the war ended, the method of fastening steel ships together by spot welding in- 
stead of riveting had just been developed to the point where its usefulness was proved. 



four hours. The engines having been demolished, the 
vessel could make no headway, and wallowed in a 
gradually rising sea. In the afternoon of the follow- 
ing day the rolling of the ship became so violent that 
the deck-load of motor-trucks broke loose. The five- 
ton trucks, threshing about on the deck, endangered 
the lives of the crew, so that the vessel was abandoned 
at five o'clock in the following afternoon, though still 
afloat and showing few signs of sinking. Several of 
the trucks went over the side, giving more room for 



i 9 2 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the others to thresh about, and finally two of them 
smashed through the deck structure, tearing open the 
hatches and permitting water to flow into all the 
holds. It was not until this that the Lucia sank. 
But for the damage done by the motor-trucks, it is 
considered doubtful that she would have sunk at all. 



XI 



THE EAGLE BOATS 



TRULY and typically American in both conception 
and execution, the Eagle boats built for the 
navy by Henry Ford rank very high in the list of 
examples of Yankee ingenuity and resourcefulness as 
applied to war problems. After two lengthy and 
detailed inspections of the Ford ship-building plant, 
from the raw steel to the finished ships, I came away 
not at all sure which was the most amazing aspect 
of the whole business, the Eagle boat itself, with its 
radical departures from every accepted canon and 
tenet o'f naval architecture, the audacity of the con- 
ception of building ships by the same program and 
method that produces the ubiquitous Ford car, or 
the truly miraculous speed with which the huge ship 
factory in which they were being made had arisen, 
Aladdin-like, on the banks of the River Rouge. 

The Eagle boat was first thought of in January, 
1 9 1 8. Mr. Ford began to make plans for the construc- 
tion of the boats and the erection of the factory for 
making them in February. I first visited the plant 
in the first week of June; it was completed in every 
detail except the launching mechanism, and half a 
dozen ships were in process of construction. And 
they are real ships; any vessel more than 200 feet 
long is entitled to be called a ship, and the Eagle 
boats are longer than that ; they are within 2 5 feet or 



i 9 4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

so of being as long as the standard 3,500-ton wooden 
ships built for the Emergency Fleet Corporation, 
although, of course, their tonnage is very much less. 
Comparison of the Eagle boats, however, should be 
with naval rather than with merchant craft. They 
are not so large as the new destroyers, but they are 
a good bit larger than the old familiar type of destroyer 
that formed the backbone of our "mosquito fleet" 
before we went into the war. 

The Eagle boat is, in fact, a destroyer without 
torpedo-tubes and with less engine power and, con- 
sequently, less speed than the new high-powered little 
bull-terriers of the sea, with their 27,000 horse-power 
and thirty-knot gait. It has speed enough, though, 
to run circles around the fastest submarine cruiser, 
running either submerged or awash, and carries 
exactly the same guns and depth-bombs that the 
destroyers carry, which experience has proved suf- 
ficient to "get " any submarine that shows a periscope 
within range. The Eagle boat is not so pretty to 
look at as a destroyer, but as the only people con- 
cerned with its appearance were expected to get their 
view of it through a periscope, the matter of looks 
was distinctly a secondary consideration in its de- 
signing. 

Historically, the Eagle boat is a development of 
the "chaser," the new class of naval craft brought 
into being by the menace of the U-boat. The 
"chaser," though first introduced to public notice 
by the British navy, is distinctly an American craft. 
When the submarines first began to menace the British 
coast everything that would float was commandeered 
into the submarine patrol service; motor-launches 
and yachts were equipped with guns and sent to sea 
in pursuit of Frits. This method of defense proved 



196 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

so effective that orders were given to an American 
ship-building company for 550 specially designed 
motor craft, officially known as "submarine chasers," 
and until the new British destroyer program was 
substantially completed and the American mosquito 
fleet was able to supplement it, which two events 
occurred about the same time, these "chasers" were 
almost the main reliance against the U-boat. 

These 85-footers, however, proved frightfully "wet" 
boats in any kind of heavy weather and not large 
enough to cover the enlarged cruising area made 
necessary by the appearance of larger German sub- 
marines. One of the first things our Navy Depart- 
ment did when we entered the war was to place orders 
for a large number of "chasers," of a similar type, 
but twenty-five feet longer. These "hundred-and- 
tens," as the navy refers to them (officially the "C" 
class), gave a good account of themselves on inshore 
duty about the British Islands and in patrol service 
on our own coasts, but they were subject to the many 
limitations of the motor-boat, and it quickly became 
apparent that something bigger was needed. 

The " hundred-and-tens " were built of wood, chiefly 
at Lake ports, partly because they could be built 
more quickly of wood and partly because the steel 
shipyard capacity of the whole nation was needed 
for merchant-craft and larger naval vessels. What 
was needed, however, was a steel vessel so designed 
that its component parts would not require the diver- 
sion of any steel production needed for other war 
purposes, big enough for any weather, fast enough 
to catch any submarine, and a manufacturer who 
would undertake to produce it in quantities faster 
than ships of any size were ever built before. If 
the manufacturer couldn't be found, the ships couldn't 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 197 




THE KEEL AND GARBOARD STRAKES OF AN EAGLE BOAT IN PLACE 



be built, and for a time it looked as if the project 
would have to be abandoned or laid aside. Then 
Henry Ford dropped in to see the Secretary of the 
Navy one day. Their conversation ran somewhat 
like this, it is said : 

"I wonder if you couldn't build these new boats 



198 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

for us," suggested the Secretary. Mr. Ford looked 
at the plans, and said that he could. 

"How fast can you build them?" inquired Mr. 
Daniels. 

"How fast do you want them?" asked Mr. Ford. 

"Begin deliveries next summer and give us the 
whole two hundred by this time next year!" sug- 
gested Mr. Daniels. 

That was in February. Mr. Ford thought a minute. 
It meant constructing a complete plant, buildings, 
machinery and all, from the ground up, in less than 
four months ; inventing ways to fabricate and assemble 
the parts of the new boats; designing and construct- 
ing special tools to do the job on a scale that would 
make it possible to turn out a ship a day after the 
plant got into operation. Most manufacturers would 
have wanted a year to get ready to begin making boats ; 
several had, in fact, looked at the plans and speci- 
fications, shaken their heads, and declined. Mr. Ford 
had never built any ships, but he had built four 
thousand automobiles a day, and he has absolutely 
no sense of any limitation to the ability of his or- 
ganization to do anything he wants it to do. 

"I'll do it," he said. 

The design of the Eagle boat was worked out in 
the Navy Department. It took only three weeks to 
make the plans, build a model, and test it for stability 
and speed in the testing-tank at the Washington 
Navy- Yard, and to draw up specifications for the 
construction of the ships. In its lines the Eagle boat 
(that is the official designation of the entire class) 
does not exactly resemble anything else that floats. 
Viewed from above, it is much more like a flounder 
than a mackerel; the midship cross-section bears a 
strong family likeness to the lines of a canal barge. Its 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 199 

stern is uncompromisingly square and blunt. Save 
for the curve of the bilge and the necessary "fairing" 
of the horizontal plan, it is composed entirely of 
straight lines and plane surfaces. But the bow tapers 
down to a razor-like stem that looks as if it could 
slice through a submarine at a pinch and be none the 
worse for it, and there is a fine sweep to the lines 
aft that gives all the speed the craft is ever likely 
to require, flat-bottomed and awkward though it 
looks out of water. Utility was the first and ruling 
consideration, low-cost production the second, with 
comfort and beauty merely incidental, if they came 
into consideration at all. 

With a length of 204 feet, the Eagle boats easily 




HULL OF EAGLE BOAT ALMOST FINISHED 



2oo YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

passed through the Welland Canal locks, which will 
take ships up to 230 feet long. But the Eagles' beam 
and draught were purposely made small enough to 
permit them to travel to seaboard by way of the New 
York State Barge Canal, as did the "C" boats. The 
Barge Canal locks are 310 feet long, 45 feet wide, and 
have 10 feet of water over the sills. The Eagles 
draw 8 feet when fully equipped and ready for sea, 
and they have a beam of considerably less than the 
width of the locks. 

The motive power of the Eagle boat is a steam- 
turbine geared to the propeller shaft, on which is 
mounted a single three-bladed screw of rather steep 
pitch. Crude-oil fuel is used to generate the steam, 
and the tank capacity of the Eagles is sufficient for 
a steaming radius of at least the distance across 
the Atlantic. Mr. Ford built the engines in the same 
Detroit factory where he builds automobiles, in an 
addition to that ninety-six-acre shop, constructed 
for this particular work. They are of a somewhat 
different type from the turbine-engines generally 
used in marine installations, and will generate in 
the neighborhood of 3,000 horse-power. Turbines 
were adopted for the Eagle boats, as they have been 
for the new destroyers and many of the ships of the 
new merchant fleet, because they occupy less space 
for the same horse-power than reciprocating engines, 
are simpler and quicker to build, and take very much 
less metal. 

Only the war emergency could have made it possible 
to put into execution the daring project of building a 
fighting-ship entirely out of sheet-steel stampings, 
but that is exactly what was done in the Eagle boats. 
Not that it is not a perfectly sound and sane way to 
build a ship, from the viewpoint of an engineer or 




WHERE THE EAGLE BOATS WERE BUILT 

The huge " Crystal Palace," a third of a mile long, on the bank of the River 
Rouge, near Detroit. 




POWER PLANTS OF EAGLE BOATS 

Some of the 2,500-horse-power steam-turbines built in the Ford plant ready for 

installation. 



202 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

a manufacturer, but it had never been done that way 
before, and in the navy it is extremely difficult, in 
peace times, to do anything except in the way in 
which it has always been done. In the Eagle boat, 
however, there is not only an entirely new type of 
naval craft, built on entirely new lines, but the 
method of construction is radically different from 
anything that has ever been attempted before. 

There is not a forging or a rolled beam or shape in 
the whole ship. Everything — keel, floors, frames, 
beams and angles — is pressed from sheet metal, cold, 
by means of automatic machinery that cuts every 
piece to an exact pattern, then punches the rivet- 
holes, thirty or forty at a time, and bends every part 
to its precise final shape. Building a ship by this 
plan is merely a matter of placing numbered parts 
together and riveting them fast; it takes no more 
skill in the actual construction work than can be im- 
parted to an ordinarily handy laborer in a couple of 
weeks' instruction. And the builder of this sort of 
ship does not have to wait on half a dozen steel 
mills for special shapes or parts; all he asks is to have 
a sufficient continuous supply of standard-sized steel 
sheets delivered at his back door, and the finished 
ships can be turned out of the front door as rapidly 
as automatic machinery can fabricate the raw steel 
into the necessary parts. 

Precisely and literally, that is the way Mr. Ford 
built the Eagle boats, by taking in steel plates at 
one door and turning out finished ships at another 
door, for these craft were constructed entirely in- 
doors, in one huge room, big enough to house twenty- 
four of them at once and still leave so much space 
that one had to walk for an appreciable part of a 
minute to get from one ship to the next ! 




THE ROLLING PLATFORM THAT CARRIED THE EAGLE BOATS FROM THE 
FACTORY TO THE LAUNCHING ELEVATOR 




NOTHING COULD BE SIMPLER THAN THE METHOD OF BUILDING THE 
EAGLE BOATS 



2o 4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

I do not think it possible to do justice in words to 
the gigantic building in which two dozen Eagle boats 
were made at one time. Where it stands was utterly- 
vacant land in February. In the following June the 
visitor approached a building which, seen from the 
highway a quarter of a mile away, looked big enough, 
in all conscience, but which, as one drew nearer, 
took on the aspect of a mammoth crystal palace, its 
glass-inclosed sides and roof suggesting something 
ethereal and phantasmagoric, as if it might dissolve 
into thin air if one should happen to utter the right 
magic formula. I could think of nothing, as I ap- 
proached it, but Keats's 

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 

Stretching its length a third of a mile along the 
banks of the River Rouge, this steel, glass and con- 
crete building, 350 feet wide and 100 high, covers 
more than thirteen acres in one room. It is so big 
that, looking from one end of it at a 200-foot ship at 
the other end is like looking at a figure on the stage 
through the wrong end of an opera-glass. There were 
six Eagle boats under construction the first day I 
visited this plant, and for a full minute after I entered 
the door and looked around I thought the place was 
empty! Then I spied the nearest of the ships and 
walked interminably across acres of floor until I 
reached it. With more than twice as many ships 
in the place, a couple of weeks later, there was still 
that compelling sense of emptiness, so enormous were 
the spaces, so expansive the areas, in this titanic 
ship-factory. And these ships, it must be remembered, 
are longer than a city block, bigger than many an 
ocean-going craft that is counted a fair ship even in 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 205 

these days, many times bigger than the caravels of 
Columbus. Seen in their vast environment, how- 
ever, they looked like toys until one got close enough 
to look up at the men at work high above, then to 




PUNCHING THE PLATES FOR EAGLE BOATS 

climb up on the deck and realize that this was no 
plaything, but a real, man-sized ship of war. 

If Mr. Ford had done nothing else than to put up 
this single building in less than four months, he might 
have regarded it, in ordinary times, as something to 
brag about; as a war measure, however, it was just 



206 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

one of hundreds of similar marvels that were per- 
formed all over the country. It was the things being 
done inside the building that counted. And the 
visitor who failed to be impressed with the idea of 
tremendous achievement when he had seen and 
studied the system and method by which the building 
of the Eagle boat moved with orderly progress from 
the railroad cars that brought the steel plates, at 
one end, to the finished ships, at the other, must 
have been incapable of being impressed by anything 
this side of the supernatural. 

Here at one end was a shed under which the steel 
was stacked in orderly piles. The thinness of these 
plates impressed one, though they are actually only 
a trifle thinner than the plates of regular destroyers. 
They are not built to withstand a shell, these Eagles; 
one realizes, of course, upon reflection, that neither 
are the destroyers. Only cruisers and battle-ships 
are armored. Farther along, upon a big, open floor, 
men laid down patterns on sheets of steel and marked 
them for the cutting- and punching-machines. Big 
stamping-presses bent certain of the sheets and strips 
into angles and channels. As the visitor moved 
toward the main building he passed an inclosure in 
which there were rows upon rows of draftsmen work- 
ing at their desks. Close to the door were the punches, 
making thirty or forty rivet-holes, each at a point 
precisely determined in advance, in the edge of a 
steel plate. As one entered the assembling-room one 
passed under a wide gallery ; up above were the offices 
of the naval officers detailed to supervise and inspect 
the construction of the Eagles. 

The place is so big that the noise of a hundred 
pneumatic riveting-hammers going at once made only 
a pleasant sort of beelike droning unless one hap- 




HAULING THE EAGLE BOAT OUT OF THE SHIP-FACTORY 

In the foreground is the rolling platform that carries the ship, with its supporting 
trucks, down to the launching elevator. 



Six 


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A SQUADRON OF EAGLE BOATS BEING FITTED OUT 



2o8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

pened to be standing close by. After the first shock 
of surprise at finding the plant so different from what 
had been anticipated was over, one involuntarily- 
compared it with a railroad station, not only because 
of its size, but because of the six lines of railroad 
track running through its length. There were trains 
of flat-cars, apparently, standing on three of the 
tracks. On close inspection, however, what seemed 
to be a train proved to be a single huge flat-car or 
platform, 200 feet long and perhaps 20 feet wide, 
mounted on an uncountable number of railway trucks. 
It was upon these rolling platforms that the Eagle 
boats were built. As the bottom strake of one was 
being laid out by the workmen, on the next the floors 
and frames were being set up; on a third platform, 
farther down the same line of rails, the shell plating 
was being riveted on, so thin and flexible that the 
operation looked almost like hanging wall-paper. At 
the far end the upper works of a ship were being fin- 
ished, the deck had already been riveted on, and 
alongside lay the rudder and the propeller, waiting for 
the big overhead crane to pick them up and swing 
them into place. On each of the three assembling- 
tracks eight Eagle boats could be under construction 
at one time, twenty-four in all, and the work was so 
laid out that each ship moved down the line in orderly 
progression, as each ship ahead of it was launched, 
ready for the next set of operations to bring it one more 
step toward completion. 

Great, rolling iron doors close the openings at the 
end of each track. The rails outside connect with 
rails which are laid on a big, heavy-framed platform 
as wide as a bay of the building and as long as an 
Eagle boat itself. This platform is, in turn, mounted 
on car wheels, which run on rails placed at right angles 




"going down" 

An Eagle boat on the hydraulic elevator being lowered into the launching basin. As 
the water in the towers is slowly released the ship, trucks, platform and all, descends. 




ON THE ELEVATOR 

The first Eagle boat being lowered into the River Rouge. 



210 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

to those running into the building; these transverse 
rails extend several hundred feet beyond the building. 
When an Eagle boat was ready for launching a loco- 
motive hauled it, platform, trucks, and all, out onto 
this transfer table. That, in turn, was hauled across 
until the rails supporting the boat came opposite a 
pair of rails that led to another platform, apparently 




AN EAGLE BOAT IN COMMISSION 

These "Tin Lizzies of the Sea" were built in quantities in the same manner 
as Ford cars. 



supported between four great concrete pillars. This 
is the launching elevator. It is an ordinary hydraulic 
elevator, supported by four columns of water inside 
the concrete pillars. The Eagle boat's supporting 
platform is rolled onto the elevator, a valve is opened, 
and the descent into the launching basin is easy and 
simple and safe as coming down from the Woolworth 
Tower, and doesn't take any longer! Elevator, plat- 
form, and all continue to go down until the boat 
floats. Then the elevator brings the empty platform 
back to the main level by hydraulic power, the plat- 
form on its trucks is shunted to the farther end of the 
building, and in half an hour the seven other Eagle 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 211 

boats on this particular line of track have been 
moved up a notch and the platform is back at the 
end of the line, ready to receive the keel and bottom 
strake of another Eagle. 

Nothing could be simpler than the whole process; 
nothing less direct and machine-like in every detail 
of its operation could possibly produce two hundred 
U-boat chasers like these in a year's time. And, at 
the same time, nothing more spectacular or amazing 
than the whole scheme, from the conception of the 
Eagle boat and its method of manufacture to the 
construction of the plant and the actual building of 
the ships, was undertaken in the course of our entire 
preparation for war. 

Only about sixty Eagle boats were actually built, 
as the contract was canceled on the signing of the 
armistice. The achievement stands, however, as per- 
haps the most striking example of what America can 
do under pressure. 



XII 

SOME YANKEE TRICKS IN UNDERSEA WARFARE 

IT is hardly going too far to say that the most im- 
portant collection of scientifically trained minds 
ever assembled in one place and set to work upon a 
single group of related problems was the organiza- 
tion of scientists, inventors, and technical engineers 
gathered at the Navy Department in Washington, 
known as the Naval Consulting Board, headed by the 
most famous inventor in the world, Thomas A. Edison. 
Very few persons in the Navy Department, even, 
realized that for practically the entire period of 
America's participation in the war Mr. Edison made 
his personal headquarters in a room close to that of 
the Secretary of the Navy. 

He spent almost all of his time, day and night, as 
is his custom, working upon scientific and technical 
problems which were under consideration by the 
Naval Consulting Board; to his genius not only as an 
individual scientist and inventor, but as a guide and 
inspiration to others, were due many of the devices 
and methods adopted by our navy, both for offensive 
and defensive purposes, which proved of immeasurable 
value in the destruction of German submarines and 
in keeping the German fleet bottled up at Wilhelms- 
haven and Helgoland. 

Before the armistice was signed the quarters of the 




THE AMERICAN NAVY TYPE OF AUTOMATIC DEPTH SUBMARINE MINE, 

WITH BOXLIKE ANCHOR THAT CONTAINS MECHANISM THAT REGULATES 

THE DEPTH. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THESE WERE LAID IN A 

BARRAGE ACROSS THE NORTH SEA 



15 



214 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

Naval Consulting Board and its staff of technicians 
had expanded until they occupied almost an entire 
wing of the gigantic new Navy Building in Washing- 
ton, that wonderful piece of solid concrete construc- 
tion containing forty-three acres of floor space, which 
was built, figuratively speaking, overnight, by the 
Navy Bureau of Yards and Docks. Many of the 
scientific discoveries and inventions which had their 
practical applications developed by the Naval Con- 
sulting Board are still secrets and will continue to be 
secrets, revealed only to the officers and men charged 
with responsibility for their operation. 

Our army is now demobilized; its military activi- 
ties are terminated for the time being at least, and, in 
the hope of every American, permanently. But even 
a League of Nations cannot relieve a country with a 
seacoast like ours from the necessity of policing our 
own shores; a League of Nations, indeed, may con- 
ceivably require America to participate in the or- 
ganization, maintenance, and operation of an inter- 
national sea police that will call for even greater 
naval resources than the signing of the armistice 
found us possessed of, efficient and extensive as those 
were. 

So while the concern of the public, other than mere 
curiosity, with the scientific achievements of the army 
is centered chiefly and properly upon the possible 
application of these technical developments to the 
pursuits of peace, the matter of our naval strength is 
one of continuing interest in peace as well as in war. 
So even though there may be little or no direct ap- 
plication to industry and commerce resulting from 
the scientific researches and developments of the 
Naval Consulting Board, some of these secrets which 
can now be disclosed have an interest and importance 






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216 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

extending beyond their usefulness in the war which 
terminated on November n, 191 8. 

Heretofore all wars have been fought on the surface 
of the land or sea. In the Great War, for the first 
time, men fought miles above the earth and hundreds 
of feet below the surface of the sea. And just as the 
submarine itself was a Yankee invention in the first 
place, so it was Yankee inventions that played the 
most important part in the war against the sub- 
marine, after Germany had initiated the ruthless use 
of the Unterseeboot, the German word for submarine 
which we shortened in English to "U-boat." It was 
Yankee ingenuity, too, that made it possible literally 
to build a fence across the entrance to the North Sea 
that effectually prevented the German navy from 
coming out into the high seas, had it shown any in- 
clination to do so. 

The submarine depth bomb, devised by the United 
States navy's experts, proved the most potent of all 
weapons against the U-boat. The depth charge itself 
looks like nothing so much as an ordinary galvanized 
ash-can. It is a cylinder, 30 inches high and 20 
inches in diameter. It contains in its interior about 
75 pounds of trinitroxylol, an explosive even more 
powerful than the famous TNT. 

The mechanism by which this explosive is set off 
is simple and sturdy enough to be practically fool- 
proof, and yet at the same time can be regulated with 
such delicacy of adjustment that the charge will in- 
evitably explode at precisely the predetermined depth, 
as indicated by a scale and an adjustable pointer on 
the exterior of the bomb. Water is not admitted to 
the interior until the external pressure has reached 
a point which depends upon the depth below the sur- 
face. The instant this depth is reached, however, 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 217 

whether it be 30 feet or 300 feet, the explosion oc- 
curs, and so precise and accurate is the operation of 
the depth charge that there is not recorded a single 
failure to perform exactly as planned. 

Depth bombs are fired in pairs from the Y-gun. 
In the beginning of their usefulness they were simply 




AS THE DEPTH BOMB EXPLODES 

A Yankee destroyer using the "ash-can and tar-barrel" method of "getting" sub- 
marines. As the depth charge is thrown over the craft moves away at full speed, 
sending up a smoke-screen to hide its movements from the enemy. 

dropped overboard from the stern of a destroyer or 
submarine-chaser, which immediately proceeded to 
go away from there at full speed. By means of the 
Y-gun, two depth charges at once are tossed over- 
board, striking the water a sufficient distance from 
the vessel to minimize the danger, although at no 
time do naval men care to linger long in the neigh- 
borhood where a depth charge has just been dropped. 
The Y-gun looks like nothing so much as the familiar 
"Siamese coupler" seen in front of tall buildings, to 
enable the fire department to attach two lines of hose 
to a single standpipe. It is merely a gun with two 



218 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

barrels, set at an angle of about 90 degrees to each 
other, both barrels being fired by a single charge 
which is placed in a chamber in the neck of the Y. 
The depth charge is laid on its side in a cradle shaped 
to hold it in position, the cradle having attached to 
it a stem or arbor which exactly fits the bore of the 
Y-gun. 

The powder charge used to fire the Y-gun is not 
so great as that used in the ordinary one-pounder 
naval quick-firing gun. Nothing could be simpler 
and, as demonstrated by the experience of our de- 
stroyers and submarine-chasers, all of which are 
equipped with the Y-gun and a supply of depth 
charges, nothing could be more effective for the de- 
struction of submarines, once their presence has been 
detected, than the depth charge. From the view- 
point of military effectiveness the depth charge and 
the Y-gun probably rank first among the scientific 
achievements of the Naval Consulting Board. 

Locating submarines from surface craft was, in the 
beginning of the war, the most difficult piece of de- 
tective work ever undertaken. Finding the proverbial 
"needle in a haystack" is child's play compared with 
it. The problem was finally solved, and solved so 
successfully that, had the war lasted another six 
months, it is the belief of American and British naval 
experts that every last remaining German submarine 
would have been destroyed had it ever ventured out 
from its sheltered harbor. 

Up to the entrance of the United States into the 
war no satisfactory method had been devised by the 
Allies for determining the presence or location of a 
submarine. The experts of the Naval Consulting 
Board appointed a special committee, early in 191 7, 
to consider this problem and devise methods of solv- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 219 

ing it. Two groups of engineers and scientists set 
to work on it simultaneously, one group working at 
the submarine base at New London, Connecticut, 
and the other at Nahant, Massachusetts. A Boston 
concern, the Submarine Signal Company, had sev- 
eral years before perfected a method of signaling from 
ship to shore and from shore to ship by the transmis- 




THE BUSINESS END OF THE SUBMARINE-DETECTOR 

Each of the shell-shaped attachments contains a microphone which picks up sound 

waves traveling through the water and transmits them to telephone receivers inside 

the ship. The picture shows the device attached to an American submarine. 



sion of sound waves through the water. This method 
had been successfully utilized both in transmitting 
danger signals from rocky coasts to approaching ships 
and also as a means of enabling vessels to enter diffi- 
cult harbors by night. The Submarine Signal Com- 
pany offered to disclose the results of its researches in 
assisting in the development of a submarine-detector, 
and into co-operation were brought experts of the 
General Electric Company and the Western Electric 



220 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

Company, all of these working at Nahant. At New 
London, Col. R. A. Milliken, professor of physics in 
the University of Chicago and chairman of the Phys- 
ics Committee of the National Research Council, 
headed the group working on the same problem. 
Other experimental stations were established, one on 
the Mohawk River near Schenectady, where all the 
facilities of the General Electric Company's research 
laboratory could be marshaled, and another on the 
Erie Canal. 

Twelve weeks after experiments began the research 
workers had perfected a new device for detecting sub- 
marines. The principle on which the submarine- 
detector works is the same as that by which the human 
ears detect the direction from which the sound comes. 
Sounds of all sorts are transmitted to greater distances 
and with much more intensity through water than 
through air. But just as a person totally deaf in 
one ear is unable to determine from what direction 
a distant sound comes, so a submarine-detector must 
have two ears in order to locate the source of the 
sound. Full details of the method by which the sub- 
marine-detector operates are still a naval secret. The 
device was first intended to be hung overboard amid- 
ships, below the water-line, with the observer sta- 
tioned on deck. It was later adapted to be attached 
to the hull of the vessel with the observer inside the 
hold, having electric connections leading through the 
side of the ship. Further experiments developed that 
in heavy weather the rocking of the boat and the 
slapping of the waves against the ship's sides confused 
the sounds reaching the observer's ears, and accurate 
observations could only be made with the engines 
stopped. All of these difficulties were overcome by 
long and patient experiment, and in the autumn of 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 221 

191 7 a squadron of submarine-chasers was equipped 
with the device and a number of American submarines 
were used as "bait" in order that a thorough test 
could be made. The machine worked perfectly; the 




LISTENING FOR SUBMARINES 

When the familiar sound of the U-boat's engines and propellers is of the same in- 
tensity in both ears, the indicator tells the precise bearing of the submarine from 

the ship. 



exact position of the submarine when fully submerged 
was discovered without the slightest difficulty. 

Then came the problem of differentiating the noise 
made by the submarine from the noise made by the 
propellers and engines of some other craft at a dis- 
tance. A series of experiments proved that the sound 
of a submarine in the receiving apparatus is quite 



222 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

different from that of any other ship. Phonograph 
records were made which exactly reproduced the 
sounds made by different sorts of craft as heard in 
the receivers of the submarine-detector, and these 
phonograph records were used in the school for sub- 
marine listeners established at Nahant, which was 
attended by officers and enlisted men of the navy who 
were trained in the use of the device. 

By the end of 191 7 the submarine-detector had been 
so perfected that its manufacture was begun, and 
Capt. R. H. Leigh, U.S.N., was detailed to head a 
special party of American officers and enlisted men 
and civilian engineers to take a quantity of the ap- 
paratus to England and test it out under actual service 
conditions. The American submarine-detector proved 
its value at once. In December, 191 7, from two to 
five U-boats passed through the English Channel 
daily. After July 1, 1918, when the entire submarine 
patrol fleet of the British and American navies had 
been equipped with the listening device, only one 
submarine is known to have passed through the Eng- 
lish Channel. In June, 1918, according to Admiralty 
estimates, one out of every four submarines was de- 
stroyed. By October, 19 18, five out of every twelve 
never returned to their bases. 

C, P. Scott, of the General Electric Company, who 
was one of the civilian engineers sent over to super- 
vise the installation of the submarine-detector, in 
an official report has described the operation of the 
device so graphically that I can convey an idea of 
its efficiency no better than by quoting him. 

"The special party under Captain Leigh took over 
about ten tons of anti-submarine detection devices 
and had also worked out the tactics necessary for the 
detection, pursuit, attack, and destruction of the 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 223 

enemy submarine. A request was made of the British 
Admiralty for the use of three boats capable of mak- 
ing eighteen knots, on which this apparatus could be 
installed and a demonstration made. No vessels of 
this speed were available, so we were forced to accept 
three fishing-trawlers of nine to ten knots speed. 

"The three trawlers were the Andrew King, Kunishi, 
and James Bentole. These trawlers were fully equipped 
with all the American submarine-detecting devices, 
radio telephones, etc., at H. M. dockyard at Ports- 
mouth, England, and on December 30, 191 7, we 
steamed out of the harbor for our first real patrol in 
English waters. The Channel lived up to its repu- 
tation of being the roughest body of water for its 
size in the world. 

"A 'P' boat, a small type of destroyer developed 
for the war, with high speed, had accompanied us, as 
the Admiralty feared we might be attacked by the 
submarine coming to the surface, and detailed one 
of these vessels as an escort. 

"The day after New- Year's we received a wireless 
from an airship that a submarine had been sighted. 
We steamed over, got our devices out, but couldn't 
hear a thing. Another message from the airship 
changed the sub's position, so we altered our course 
and obtained a clear indication from the listening 
device. The Hun was moving slowly up the Channel, 
submerged. 

"We gave the 'P' boat a 'fix' [cross bearing] on 
the spot where our indication showed the submarine 
to be. She ran over the place, dropping a 'pattern' 
of depth charges, and soon we began to see tre- 
mendous amounts of oil rising to the surface. Evi- 
dently our first experience was to be successful. How 
successful we did not learn until afterward. 



224 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

"A trawling device had been developed which in- 
dicated whether contact with a submarine had been 
made. After the oil came up we got out our trawling 
device and ran over the area for about an hour and 
finally got an indication. We threw over a buoy to 
indicate the spot and anchored for the night, as it 
was getting dark. Next morning we trawled again 
and got another contact within a hundred yards of 
the buoy. We had destroyed a submarine in our first 
test and the ' sub ' was given out by the Admiralty as a 
'probable.' 

"The British after we came back thought so well 
of the device as demonstrated in the first test that 
many were ordered from the United States. We had 
taken over detailed drawings of all the apparatus, and 
pointed out to them that if the shipping facilities were 
such that some delay might occur in getting American- 
made devices overseas they could build them them- 
selves. 

"About May, 19 18, our own ships began to come 
over with all these devices installed. They were also 
equipped with radio telephones, depth charges, and 
'Y'guns. 

"When the American submarine-chasers began to 
arrive they were assigned to the Channel, where the 
German submarine activities were greatest, and we 
did a good deal of patrolling in the early spring with 
these chasers. The second lot of chasers was ordered 
to Corfu, in the Adriatic, in June. 

"We had thirty-six chasers based in a little bay on 
the island, and the barrage of boats extended across 
the Strait of Otranto, a distance of about forty miles. 
Conditions in the Adriatic were ideal for hunting 
submarines. The water was very deep, ranging from 
four hundred to six hundred fathoms, which meant 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 225 

that the submarines when hard pressed could not 
seek shallow water, as was their custom in the Eng- 
lish Channel and the North Sea. Due to less shipping 
traffic in these waters, there was practically no sound 
interference, which made for very good listening. 

"The main Austrian submarine bases were at Pola, 
at the head of the Adriatic, and Cattaro, farther down 
the coast. 

"The German submarines leaving Pola were 
obliged to go through Otranto Strait to get to the 
Mediterranean, and once through they had things 
practically their own way, as there were very few 
patrol-boats in the Mediterranean. The tonnage sunk 
during the first three years of the war shows the con- 
dition that existed before the Otranto barrage was 
put in effect. 

- ' Our submarine-chasers while on barrage were con- 
stantly in sound contact with enemy submarines, 
especially at night, as they usually attempted to get 
through during the dark hours. They would run 
down on the surface at their maximum speed and 
could be heard for an hour or two before they came to 
our line. The difference between the sound of an oil- 
engine and that of an electric motor is so distinctive 
that it was comparatively easy to tell when they 
changed from one to the other, which was necessary 
as soon as they submerged. As they knew approxi- 
mately where our line was, they invariably submerged 
two or three miles before they reached the line. 

"The course of the submarine was plotted to scale 
by the flag-ship of a unit from bearings given to it 
from the other two boats and also from its own bear- 
ings. When the submarine had approached suffi- 
ciently close, the unit was got under way and ma- 
neuvered into position for attack. The attack was 



226 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

usually made when the submarine was 400 or 500 
yards ahead, and all three boats of a unit, steaming full 
speed ahead, would lay a pattern of depth charges 
over the area where the plotted position showed the 
submarine to be. 

"Many successful attacks were made in these 
waters, one in particular being quite exciting. One of 
the ships in a unit heard what sounded like a sub- 
marine. In a few minutes all three listeners had 
picked him up and the bearing of his course was being 
plotted. The middle chaser, the flag-ship, was get- 
ting readings showing that the submarine was in a 
direct line astern and steaming toward her. 

"The sound was very loud, as if the 'sub' must 
be very close. Suddenly the water began to slap the 
bottom of the boat so that every one could feel it, 
and the next moment the observer reported that his 
bearing on the submarine had changed from 180 
degrees, which was dead astern, to 3 degrees, which 
was on our bows. The submerged submarine had 
passed directly under the center boat. All three boats 
were immediately got under way and the attack was 
delivered. After all the depth charges had been 
dropped the ships were stopped and observations 
again taken. A propeller was heard to start up and run 
for about thirty seconds, and then a crunching noise 
was heard. It was quite evident that the 'sub,' 
having been put out of control, sank to the bottom 
and had collapsed, due to the tremendous pressure 
at these depths. We went back to the spot the next 
morning and found an oil slick 2 miles long by 800 
yards wide on the surface of the water. The submarine 
was doubtless put out of control, and after getting 
down to 300 or 400 feet in depth had collapsed, due 
to the tremendous pressure at these depths. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 227 

"We told the admiral at Brindisi, Commodore Kelly, 
about this attack and he was very much interested. 

"'But,' he said, 'what we want is a few arms and 
legs with it. It is interesting enough to bring up a 
lot of oil, but you know how they are at the Ad- 
miralty — they want proof.' 

"We replied that we wished we could do it, but 
under the circumstances the water was too deep. 
At the point where a submarine goes down out of 
control there isn't anything to come up. We were 
rather amused at reports that after a submarine was 
sunk how chairs and everything else came to the 
surface. For my part, I never saw anything the size 
of your hand on a submarine that would float. 

"The addition of listening devices to all American 
submarines was of tremendous assistance to them 
when out on patrol. The American submarine base 
was at Bear Haven, Ireland, and submarines operated 
from there off the west coast of Ireland on the look- 
out for U-boats. Up to the time that we entered the 
war, submarines, once they submerged, were both 
blind and deaf. The development of the listeners 
for use with submarines gave them an added sense 
which they used constantly after they got into the 
war zone and began an anti-submarine warfare. 

"The first trip the AL-i made, after having had 
an American detector installed, was following a U- 
boat (which she had previously seen submerge about 
four miles distant) for four hours, both submerged, 
the AL-i changing her course entirely by observa- 
tions given to the captain by the listener. The Hun 
was unaware that he was being followed, 'blew his 
tanks, ' and came up, all of which could be heard on 
the AL-i, and when the AL-i rose to periscope height 
and 'took a look,' the U-boat was only 600 yards 



228 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

away and dead ahead. We shot a torpedo at him, but 
the torpedo 'broached' (came out of the water), and 
the German, who apparently was scanning the hori- 
zon rather carefully before coming entirely up, saw 
it coming and immediately made a crash dive to 
escape it. This is only one instance of what the added 
sense of hearing did for the submarines as patrol 
vessels. It also enabled them to stay submerged 
when surface craft were in the neighborhood." 

A peculiar incident which happened early one 
morning in the Mediterranean near the entrance to 
the Adriatic Sea shows that complete evidence of 
the effectiveness of the depth charge was not always 
lacking. An enemy submarine had been caught in 
a net. A pattern of depth charges was laid around her 
and the trawler backed away to take an observation. 
One of the observers, who was operating the over- 
board listening device from his station on deck, felt 
a heavy object brush against the detector. A few 
minutes later he was dumfounded to see a German 
sailor climb on board. He had evidently been thrown 
into the sea by the force of the explosion and saved 
himself by grasping the detector as he drifted through 
the water ! 

The biggest single military job our navy did in the 
war was the laying of a mine barrage across the prin- 
cipal channels of the North Sea, a barrage which 
could have been and doubtless would have been ex- 
tended, had the war continued, so as to make it ab- 
solutely certain that any attempt on the part of the 
German fleet to come out would have resulted in 
complete disaster. The speed and efficiency with 
which these mines were laid excited the wonder and 
admiration of the personnel of the British naval 
forces with which our navy was co-operating. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 229 

The mines themselves are marvels of Yankee in- 
genuity, as well as the method of laying them. A 
mine-laying ship could steam ahead at full speed and 
lay mines at exactly regular intervals, each mine 
being anchored in place and so attached to its anchor 
as to float at an exact predetermined depth below the 
surface of the water. Our North Sea barrage con- 
sisted of some hundreds of thousands of mines placed 
at three different depths in parallel rows, from seven 
to fifteen feet below the surface of the water. 

How mines can be tossed overboard in a heavy 




RAW MATERIAL FOR THE NORTH SEA MINE BARRAGE 

Stores of mine sinkers, two deep, and, back of them, mine spheres, three deep, await- 
ing assembly, or "marrying." Inverness, Scotland. 



sea, with the sure knowledge that they will remain 
floating at a fixed spot and at a fixed depth below the 
level of the water, is a puzzle that even many men 
in the navy who have been actually engaged in this 
mine-laying work do not fully understand. It is easy 
to understand how a certain length of cable may be 
attached to an anchor at one end and a mine at the 
other, and if the depth of the water is known of course 
the length of the cable can be adjusted to hold the 
mine at a certain depth below the surface. This is 

16 



230 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the old-fashioned method. It involves very careful 
soundings for every mine and a certain amount of 
guesswork and change. The water at the point 
where one mine is placed may be ioo feet deep; 20 
yards farther on, where the next mine is planted, it 
may be 200 feet deep. Another 20 yards and the depth 
may be 300 feet. 

These variations in depth make no difference what- 
ever with the laying of the new American naval mines, 
the mechanism of which I shall attempt to describe 
as clearly as possible. The mine itself is a simple 
affair, consisting of a spherical buoyant chamber con- 
taining in its interior a quantity of high explosive, 
and so sensitized to sudden blows that a vessel strik- 
ing the mine from any angle or on any side will im- 
mediately set off the explosive. The Yankee trick 
that enabled us to lay this great North Sea barrage 
lies in the mine anchor and the mechanism which it 
contains. The mine anchor is a cubical box of gal- 
vanized sheet-iron. It is weighted on the bottom 
sufficiently to furnish a firm anchorage, even in 
stormy weather, for the mine that floats above it and 
to which it is attached by a thin wire cable. 

Inside the square box of the anchor is a reel, from 
which run two lengths of wire cable. One of these is 
attached to the mine itself and is long enough to 
reach from the surface approximately to the bottom 
in any depth of water in which it is practicable to 
lay mines. The other cable is attached to a solid 
lump of metal called a plummet. Before it is launched 
the mine nests in the open top of the boxlike anchor 
and is fastened by a simple catch which loops over a 
projection on the mine itself. On the bottom of the 
anchor box are four flanged wheels which run on rails 
laid on the deck of the mine-laying ship. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 231 

These rails lead to the stern of the ship and end 
there at a port through which the mine is launched 
overboard. Two, three, four, or more lines of rails, 
leading into the launching ports from switches and 
side-tracks inside the ship, where the mines are 
stored, make it possible to launch mines at the rate 
of two or three a minute, or even faster if necessary. 

The trick that determines the depth below the sur- 
face at which the mine will float, once it is anchored 
safely at the bottom, is turned by adjusting the length 
of the cable to which the plummet is attached before 
the mine is launched. Is it desired to have the mine 
float at a depth of seven feet below the surface? 
Then the plummet-line is exactly seven feet long; 
and this is what happens when the mine, nested 
in its anchor box, is dropped overboard: 

First the entire apparatus starts to sink, the weight 
of the anchor dragging the buoyant mine below the 
surface. A few feet below the surface the water press- 
ure acts upon a trigger, releasing it and thereby un- 
fastening the catch that holds the mine to the anchor 
box. The mine rises to the surface, the anchor box 
continues to sink, its downward progress now ac- 
celerated, since it is relieved of the buoyancy of the 
mine. But the solid plummet has reached the end of 
its cable and is hanging at the same distance below 
the anchor that it is desired to have the mine float 
below the surface. 

So long as the weight of the plummet is suspended 
from the anchor box the windlass or reel from which 
the mine cable is paid out continues to function and 
the anchor descends, with the mine itself floating on 
the surface. The instant the plummet touches bot- 
tom the removal of the strain on the plummet cable 
releases a catch inside the anchor box, which locks 



232 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the reel and prevents the paying out of any more 
cable. 

If the plummet cable is seven feet long it is quite 
apparent that this locking of the reel will occur when 
the anchor is just seven feet from the bottom. But 
the anchor continues to sink and now it begins to pull 
the mine down with it, since the mine cable no longer 
runs freely from the reel. The mine itself, therefore, 
is drawn from the surface to a depth of seven feet or 
to such other depth as may have been determined in 
advance by the length of the plummet cable. 

This method of planting mines, and the mine- 
anchor mechanism that makes it possible to lay them 
rapidly and in large numbers, have been among the 
most carefully guarded of the navy secrets. By 
September, 1918, the Navy Bureau of Ordnance had 
developed the production of mines to where more 
than 1,000 complete mines were being turned out 
daily. An official statement of the Navy Depart- 
ment issued September 9, 19 18, stated that "if all the 
mines produced by the Bureau of Ordnance since 
America entered the war were planted (the same dis- 
tance being maintained between the mines as in min- 
ing operations at sea) the mine belt would cross the 
Atlantic eight times." 

To obtain these mines in such enormous quantities, 
as well as to preserve secrecy regarding their charac- 
teristics, a radical departure from usual manufact- 
uring methods was adopted. Naval plants did not 
possess facilities for manufacturing as many as 1,000 
mines per month, and such plants were congested with 
other work. It was impracticable to develop a great 
plant for the sole purpose of manufacturing mines, 
since there was not sufficient time for this purpose. 
The expedient was adopted, therefore, of dividing 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 233 

the mine into many parts and having these manu- 
factured at different commercial plants, all the parts 
being brought together and assembled, the mine being 
then loaded at a central mine depot. The work was 
divided among 140 principal contractors and more 
than 400 sub-contractors. 

In the design of these American mines special care 
was taken to fulfil all requirements of the Hague 
Convention. Should a mine break adrift from its 
anchor it is immediately rendered inactive by internal 
mechanism placed there for that specific purpose, and 
it floats on the surface, where it can easily be de- 
stroyed. Should a ship strike a floating American 
mine the firing-mechanism would not function. 



XIII 

THE WONDERS OF WAR WIRELESS 

IN the winter of 1902-03 I had the privilege of vis- 
iting William Marconi, the inventor of wireless 
telegraphy, at his first transatlantic wireless station 
at Glace Bay, Cape Breton. With the aid of a crude 
and bulky apparatus signals had just been inter- 
changed for the first time between America and the 
British Islands. Sometimes the signals were intelli- 
gible, sometimes they were totally incomprehensible. 
Any electrical disturbance in the atmosphere, a 
thunder-storm, the aurora borealis, made wireless 
communication impossible. Signals could be trans- 
mitted only at night; by day the huge installation 
was useless. 

People laughed at Marconi and his dream of wire- 
less as a practical means of communication. His 
faith in himself and in the future of his invention was 
unbounded. One day we stood on the cliff at Table 
Head and looked out over the Atlantic. Far off on 
the horizon rose a column of smoke, revealing the 
presence of a steamship, hull down, just over the 
curve of the world. 

"Some day," said Marconi, "every ship will carry 
a wireless outfit and will always be in communication 
with land and other ships. It will make navigation 
easier and safer, and that will be enough reward for 
me if I never make any money out of this invention." 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 235 

It was wonderful to think of. It was incredible 
that such things could be. The inventor's imagina- 
tion had projected itself so far beyond the bounds of 
anything with which the world was familiar that his 
dream savored of the supernatural. As we passed 







L 




£ 


I 






1 
B 


f H h 






i fi 


irae^ i LwU 




Wfr J Ft'^Imi is 


tfllHirin I^m£ i A- 



THE NAVY WIRELESS STATION AT ARLINGTON 

The four six-hundred-and-fifty-foot towers that support the aerials of the 
most powerful wireless station in the world 



through historic Salem on our way back to Boston I 
outlined briefly to the brilliant young Italian the 
story of Salem's famous witchcraft trials and execu- 
tions. Marconi smiled. 

"They wouldn't have done a thing to me, would 
they?" was his comment. 

While Marconi was tinkering with his wireless toy 
on the coast of Nova Scotia a couple of Americans 



236 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

were playing with another toy a thousand miles 
farther south, on the coast of North Carolina. 
Down at Kitty hawk the Wright brothers were just 
finding out how to make a flying-machine fly. They 
might have laughed at Marconi, as Marconi might 
have laughed at them, had either of them known 
what the other was trying to do. Vivid as was the 
wireless man's imagination, wonderful as were the 
possibilities of radio communication as he visualized 
them, the wonders that have been wrought in but a 
few years have so far surpassed his early dream that 
the things he alone foresaw then have become com- 
monplace. 

Marconi never dreamed, any more than the Wright 
brothers, of a day when, as the result of the combina- 
tion of their two discoveries, men flying 150 miles 
an hour, three, four, five miles up in the air, could 
talk with other men flying in other machines, or with 
people on the earth's surface, and hear instructions 
given by wireless telephone from a distance of twenty, 
sixty, or even hundreds of miles. 

Of all the wonders worked by the miracle-makers 
in the war the perfection of the wireless telephone is 
perhaps the most wonderful. In the whole field of 
radio communication marvelous strides have been 
made. Communication by wireless telegraphy has 
been perfected until it is now definitely possible and 
a matter of every-day practice for messages to be sent 
from the United States government's great station 
at Arlington, the largest and most powerful in the 
world, half-way around the globe. 

Weather and atmospheric conditions no longer inter- 
fere with successful wireless transmission. By means 
of tuning-devices, impulses from one station do not 
interfere with those from another. Means have also 



23 8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

been found for the successful transmission by radio 
impulses of energy so directed and controlled that 
vessels may be navigated at a distance, and even air- 
craft sent aloft, guided and steered and brought in 
safely without a pilot. But the wireless telephone 
in its perfection is the most startling and marvelous 
of all the war-born applications of Marconi's epoch- 
making discovery, and in its adaptation to com- 
munication between aircraft and the earth has found 
its most spectacular use. 

When the United States entered the war there had 
been developed by the Allies a system of wireless 
telegraphy between airplanes and the earth, which, 
however, made it necessary that every observer using 
it should be an expert telegraph operator. It hap- 
pened that at the head of the United States Signal 
Corps was the one man who had probably gone 
farther than any one else in the field to perfect the 
wireless telephone, Maj.-Gen. George O. Squier, 
Chief Signal Officer, U.S.A. General Squier, nearly 
ten years before, had invented a device which he 
termed the multiplex telephone, by means of which 
any number of telephonic communications could be 
carried on at once over a single wire; the system was 
in reality a wireless- telephone system, the wire 
serving merely to direct the wireless waves along a 
certain path. This system was recently perfected, 
and is now in commercial use by the American Tele- 
graph and Telephone Company. It was General 
Squier who first discovered that a tree could be used 
as a wireless tower by fastening the ground wire to a 
nail driven into the trunk. He had installed the first 
wireless system in the Philippines, he had originated 
other devices and developed the wireless-telegraph 
system in use by the United States army, and under 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 239 

his direction the development of a radio-telephone 
system for airplanes was undertaken. 

The problems involved were many, the obstacles to 
be overcome baffling. But before the United States 
had been a year at war wireless equipment for air- 
planes, solving every problem and overcoming every 
difficulty, had been perfected and was being manu- 
factured by thousands of sets, so that within a few 
months every observation airplane in the service of 
the United States in France would have been equipped, 
as a large number of them had been equipped, with 
an apparatus that would enable the pilot and ob- 
server to talk with each other, to talk with wireless- 
telephone stations behind their own lines, and so con- 
vey instantly information of the enemy's movements 
or report the effect of artillery fire, and to hear mes- 
sages spoken into telephone receivers on the ground 
many miles away. 

Moreover, the commanding officer of a squadron 
of airplanes could by telephone direct the movements 
of the squadron or of particular airplanes, speaking 
only in an ordinary conversational tone. 

And when I say that this apparatus had been per- 
fected I mean precisely that. Details of the mechan- 
ism may be further refined, weight may be reduced 
by such refinement and probably will be in the future, 
and the range of communication may be, and prob- 
ably will be, greatly extended by reason of these and 
other improvements. But airplane radio-telephone 
apparatus in use to-day, of which the army possesses 
many thousands of sets, will be perfectly adapted to 
any service that may be required of it ten or fifteen 
years from now, just as a high-grade automobile of the 
1909 model answers every essential purpose of an 
automobile to-day. The newer machines may be 



2 4 o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

more attractive in their lines and equipped with more 
conveniences, but that is all the essential difference. 

The first problem to be solved in equipping air- 
planes with wireless was to overcome the noise of the 
motor-exhaust and the propeller. Not even the 
traditional boiler-factory is as noisy as the cockpit 
of an airplane. Even putting a muffler on the engine, 
if that could be done without reducing power and 
causing dangerous backfiring, would not serve to re- 
duce the noise, the worst of which comes from the pro- 
peller-blades. 

In the Signal Corps laboratory was set up a ma- 
chine for producing a noise exactly duplicating the 
noise of a high-powered airplane in flight, and here 
were tested innumerable devices of ear-pieces in- 
tended to exclude all sounds, except those of the 
telephone receiver, from the aviator's ears. It was 
discovered that not only must the external ear be 
protected against sound waves, but that the bones of 
the head and face all serve as a sounding-board or 
diaphragm, transmitting sound from the surface to 
the auditory nerves. So there was finally devised a 
helmet covering all of the bony surface of the skull, 
lined with spongy rubber backed up with tin-foil 
and covered externally with thick leather. With 
this helmet on the wearer can hear only the sounds 
formed by the vibration of the telephone diaphragms 
attached to the inside of the helmet and clamped by 
it firmly over his ears. 

It was not enough, however, to protect the ears of 
the aviator against the noise of the machine; a trans- 
mitter had to be devised that would not gather and 
transmit the noise of exhaust and propeller, but that 
would, nevertheless, respond to the aviator's voice 
without too much effort on his part. This was finally 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 241 

accomplished by inclosing the transmitter, which is 
attached in such a way that it always is close to the 
aviator's mouth, in an aluminum-covered, sound- 
proof case, pierced with three small holes. This per- 
mits the receiver to function when one speaks directly 









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AIR-DRIVEN DYNAMO FOR WIRELESS TELEPHONY 

The tiny propeller operates a little magneto when in flight, generating sufficient 
current to actuate the flyer's wireless- telephone apparatus 



into these holes, but sounds coming from an angle 
or laterally are not transmitted. 

Muffled in his sound-proof helmet, a pilot or ob- 
server cannot even hear the sound of his own voice. 
No sound waves can reach him except such as are 
received through the ear-pieces inside the helmet. 
Medical observers report a distinct physical and psy- 
chological improvement in airmen who wear the hel- 
mets. A large part of the nerve strain under which 
so many fliers have collapsed has been attributed 
to the incessant noise of the machines, which is thus 
eliminated. There is also a marked diminution of the 



242 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

tendency to deafness which has affected aviators in 
the past. 

A detailed description of the perfected airplane 
wireless equipment would involve going into techni- 
calities which even wireless men sometimes find dif- 
ficult to grasp. It is enough to say that its successful 
development was based upon novel uses and adapta- 
tions of the audion, a little device invented by Dr. Lee 
De Forest, America's foremost wireless inventor, and 
which is sometimes termed the "bottle imp" of wire- 
less. The audion, which is a development of the 
Crookes tube, which in turn is the basis of the X-ray, 
is the most versatile device known to electric science. 
It serves as a receiver and as a transmitter, as a 
detector and an amplifier, for transforming alternating 
into direct current and vice versa, besides being able 
to perform many other curious and useful tricks. 

The whole wireless installation for an army air- 
plane weighs about 125 pounds, and is all stored in a 
wooden box no bigger than a suit-case. By turning a 
knob the man in the machine can adjust the in- 
strument to any one of forty-five combinations of 
tone and wave length, there being nine wave lengths 
and five tones provided for. 

This makes it possible to eliminate interference ab- 
solutely; a commander of a flying squadron can use 
one combination to talk to the men of his squadron, 
another to talk to the observer in his own machine, 
another for communication with the headquarters of 
his squadron on the ground, still another for commu- 
nication with the artillery whose fire he may be 
directing, and yet have many other combinations in 
reserve for use in talking with other stations, and he 
can switch from one to the other of these instantly 
by the turning of a knob. At the same time his ob- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 243 

server may be receiving messages from one or another 
of these stations. By means of blinker lights, inter- 
ference between pilot and observer is prevented, as 
each sees a visible signal when the other is using the 
telephone. 

The range of wireless telephony, like wireless teleg- 
raphy, is limited by the power of the sending station ; 




WIRELESS TELEPHONE TRANSMITTER AND HEADPIECE 

The transmitter is completely inclosed in an aluminum case pierced by three tiny 
holes, excluding all sounds but words spoken directly into it 



the sending range of an airplane is necessarily short. 
About 15 miles is the maximum for an army machine 
and around 60 miles for the bigger navy seaplanes, 
which carry an apparatus weighing about twice as 
much as that of the army airplane. There is no 
limit to the distance from which an airplane in the 
air may receive messages; while it has not been done, 
there is no reason why an American 'plane flying over 
Germany should not hear a telephone message directed 
to it from the Navy Department sending station at 



244 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

Arlington. It is simply a question of tuning. The 
200 feet of copper wire with a weight on the end, 
which the aviator unreels as he ascends and winds up 
as he alights, is an antenna sufficient to receive mes- 
sages from any distance. 

For sending wireless impulses the airplane radio 
outfit generates its own power; storage batteries were 
tried, but they were too heavy, so a little generator, 
which is in all essentials, except size, exactly like the 
big dynamos in electric-light stations, was devised. 
It is inclosed in a cylindrical case, tapered off at one 
end until it looks like a shell. At the other end is a 
tiny propeller. The apparatus is attached to one 
of the struts of the landing-gear. As the airplane 
flies the little propeller acts as a windmill, rotating 
the tiny dynamo; variations in speed are equalized 
by the versatile audion. 

On exactly the same principle wireless telephones 
are now installed on all naval vessels. In the last 
months of the war every member of a squadron of 
destroyers or submarine-chasers was in constant com- 
munication with each of the other ships in the squad- 
ron by telephone, and each could receive telephone 
communications from a mother ship or from land 
stations, although the sending sets on small craft are 
not capable of extended range. But when President 
Wilson returned from France on the George Washing- 
ton after settlement of the terms of peace, he was able 
to talk by wireless telephone from the ship direct to 
Washington, and to carry on extended conversations, 
so fully had the wireless telephone been perfected in 
the four years since the Navy Department began its 
experiments with the radio telephone. For these 
communications the navy wireless station at New 
Brunswick, New Jersey, served as the connecting link 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 245 

between the radio impulses and the land wires of the 
navy's telephone system, messages between Washing- 
ton and the ship being transmitted by wire from 
Washington to New Brunswick, and thence by the 
radio to the ship, and vice versa. These messages were 
not relayed, but the land telephone lines were so con- 
nected with the wireless receiving and sending appa- 
ratus as to form one continuous circuit. 

The navy's first experiments in transmitting the 
human voice over great distances by wireless took 
place on August 27, 191 5, in conjunction with en- 
gineers of ■ the American Telegraph and Telephone 
Company, and vocal signals were transmitted from 
the naval radio station at Arlington to the naval 
radio station at Darien, on the Isthmus of Panama. 
Two selections were played on a phonograph placed 
in front of the telephone transmitter, and these were 
correctly recognized by the operators at Darien. 
In addition, words and sentences were spoken into the 
transmitter by various officials present, and several 
words and phrases were received. The distance cov- 
ered was about 2,100 miles. 

On September 29, 191 5, a test was carried out be- 
tween the naval radio stations at Arlington, Virginia, 
and Mare Island, California. The long-distance line 
from New York was connected to the radio- telephone 
transmitter, and a telephone line from San Francisco 
to New York was set up, so that conversation might 
be carried on in both directions. Speech was success- 
fully transmitted from New York to Washington by 
telephone, from Washington to San Francisco by 
radio telephone, and replies were received over the 
telephone from San Francisco to New York. 

Having succeeded in talking over a distance of 
2,500 miles, arrangements were made whereby radio- 
17 



2 4 6 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

telephone signals transmitted from the naval radio 
station at Arlington would be received at Paris and 
at Honolulu simultaneously. On October 23, 191 5, 
the signals transmitted from Arlington were success- 
fully received at both Paris and Honolulu. 

All of these tests consisted of one-way conversations 
only. In May, 191 5, a radio-telephone transmitting 
set was installed on the battle-ship New Hampshire, 
and conversation was satisfactorily conducted in both 
directions, the Arlington station being used for the 
shore transmission. The New Hampshire was about 
fifty miles at sea, and observers reported that trans- 
mission was even more perfect than with the ordinary 
telephone. The signals could be received on any 
radio-telegraphic receiving apparatus, and many 
operators at shore stations along the Atlantic coast 
heard the entire test. It is stated that various sounds 
aboard the ship could be heard very distinctly, such 
as the sound of an officer's footsteps when walking 
across the deck to call another officer to the telephone. 

The apparatus used in these experiments consisted 
of several score of vacuum tubes arranged in parallel; 
it was dismantled soon after the final experiments 
took place. While the transmission of speech was 
perfectly satisfactory, the installation was a very 
expensive one, and the cost of the upkeep of such 
an outfit would be prohibitive. Messages could be 
transmitted much more economically and efficiently 
by radio-telegraphy than by radio-telephony. 

A great many advances in the art have been made 
since that time. At the urgent solicitation of the 
Navy Department, the engineers of the General 
Electric Company, the largest electrical concern in the 
United States, became interested in the matter, and 
developed apparatus which is entirely different from 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 247 

the original outfit. Instead of utilizing oscillations 
generated by vacuum tubes, the oscillations are pro- 
duced by the Alexanderson high-frequency alternator 




PERFECTED FORM OF WIRELESS HEADPIECE FOR AVIATORS 

Spongy rubber pads press tightly on all the bony parts of the head to 
muffle the sounds of engine and propellers 



installed at the New Brunswick radio station, which 
has been operated by the Navy Department since we 
entered the war. 
This machine, the invention of Dr. Ernst F. W. 



248 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

Alexanderson, an engineer of the General Electric 
Company, may be used not only for radio-telephony, 
but also without alteration for radio-telegraphy, and, 
while the initial cost is considerable, the upkeep is 
comparatively negligible. The machine is very stable 
and dependable in every respect, and can be produced 
in any size desired. The resemblance between the 
Alexanderson machine and the original apparatus in- 
stalled at Arlington is somewhat similar to the re- 
semblance between a dry battery and a dynamo. The 
bulbs, like batteries, are expensive and do not last 
very long, whereas the Alexanderson alternator may 
be used for years without deterioration. 

The principle upon which the machine operates is 
exceedingly simple. A large metal wheel, the rim of 
which consists of alternate sections of magnetic and 
non-magnetic material, rotates at a high speed in 
a magnetic field, and produces oscillations in the 
coils in the magnetic field, the frequency of the 
oscillations being proportional to the speed at which 
the machine is run. Elaborate attachments are pro- 
vided to keep the speed of the machine absolutely 
constant. One of the great advantages of the ma- 
chine when used for radio-telegraphy is that the wave 
length transmitted may be varied simply by changing 
the speed of the machine. 

The fields of radio-telegraphy and radio-telephony 
are separate and distinct. The relation is very much 
the same as the ordinary telegraph bears to the tele- 
phone; for instance, it is usually cheaper and much 
more accurate to send a message to a distant point by 
telegraph than by telephone, and it is very much easier 
to preserve the secrecy of the communication, as a 
telegram can be sent in code. It is a well-known fact 
that it is exceedingly difficult to transmit a code 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 249 

message by telephone, as certain letters and words are 
practically indistinguishable. This has been realized 
in the navy, where a list of names has been prepared 
for the various letters and they are always used in 
transmitting code messages or signals by voice. The 
following are the names in use: 



a — able 


J— jig 


s — sail 


b — boy 


k — king 


t — tare 


c — east 


1 — love 


u — unit 


d — dog 


m— Mike 


v — vice 


e — easy 


n — -Nan 


w — watch 


f— fox 


— oboe 


x — -X-ray 


g — George 


p— pup 


y — yoke 


h — have 


q — quack 


z — Zed 


i — -item 


r — rot 





While the wireless telephone and its applications 
which I have already outlined is the most widely 
known application of the principle of energy trans- 
mission without the aid of wires, wireless telegraphy 
in many other forms of development received a 
tremendous impetus during the war. At the outbreak 
of the European War the most powerful wireless 
stations on both sides of the Atlantic were owned by 
Germany. The big German wireless station at 
Nauen, in the outskirts of Berlin, had a capacity 
extending literally around the world. German ships 
in the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic were in 
direct communication with the German Admiralty. 
And a year before the outbreak of the European War, 
1 9 13, the German government built, at Tuckerton, 
New Jersey, a secluded little village on the shores of 
Barnegat Bay, the tallest towers in the world. The 
steel framework of this Tuckerton tower was brought 
over from Germany all ready to assemble; it was in- 
voiced as "building material," and so little suspicion 



250 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

was aroused that it was possible for the Germans to 
complete the tower and install the powerful wireless 
apparatus, using the Goldsmith high-frequency sys- 
tem, before any one in the United States was aware 
of their purpose. This German wireless tower at 
Tuckerton and the other German wireless station 
at Sayville, Long Island, were seized by the United 
States government long before this country became a 
belligerent, as there was evidence the Germans were 
using this means of communication in a way that 
violated America's neutrality. But before the war 
was over the United States had constructed at Arling- 
ton, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Wash- 
ington, the most powerful wireless station in the world. 
This consists of four steel towers, each 650 feet high, 
supporting the antennae, which, with the ground 
system, require 160 miles of wire. This powerful 
plant was erected and equipped by the navy in ten 
months. At the signing of the armistice we had under 
construction at Bordeaux, France, an even more power- 
ful wireless station, and with our naval wireless sta- 
tions on the Pacific coast, at Pearl Harbor in the 
Hawaiian Islands and in the Philippines, radio com- 
munication between American stations completely 
encircling the world is assured at all times and any 
American vessel at sea in any part of the world can 
be communicated with instantly. 

What may well prove to be the most useful of all 
applications of radio-telegraphy is the radio compass 
perfected by the navy electrical experts. The wire- 
less compass operates in precisely the same fashion as a 
lighthouse, except that its range is unlimited, while 
that of even the most powerful light is a bare twenty 
miles; moreover, it is not obscured by fog at night 
and is equally useful by day. If the shipping routes 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 251 

of the Seven Seas were all marked by rows of light- 
houses twenty miles apart, furnishing beacons by 
night and landmarks by day, navigation would be as 
simple as walking up Broadway. No captain with 
his ship under control would have the slightest dif- 
ficulty in finding his way about or into any port of 
the world. Of course it will never be feasible, either 
economically or as a matter of engineering, to mark 
the paths of navigation by any such means, but the 
radio compass has provided a perfectly feasible and 
simple method of accomplishing precisely the same 
result. 

I have said that the principle of the radio compass 
is the same as that of a lighthouse. The coasts of 
every civilized country in the world are marked by 
lights which vary one from another, so that the 
mariner approaching either a dangerous coast or the 
entrance to a harbor can tell by the character of the 
lights visible precisely where he is. Thus, the com- 
mander of a ship approaching New York Harbor, 
seeing a light flashing to starboard at ten-second in- 
tervals and knowing that he is somewhere southwest 
from Nantucket, recognizes it as the Montauk Point 
light, at the extreme eastern extension of Long 
Island. A little later on he picks up the Shinnecock 
Bay light, a group of lights flashing at intervals of 7^2 
seconds, and that he is steering the right course he 
determines a few knots farther on when he sees the 
great white flare of Fire Island flashing once a minute. 
But if too far out at sea for these and the other coast- 
wise lights to be visible, he must depend at night 
upon the stars and by day upon the sun to determine 
his position and in fog he has no guidance. 

The radio compass will give him his position on the 
chart at any time. The visible apparatus required is 



252 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

a coil of wire wound around a wooden frame about six 
feet square, which is mounted so as to rotate on a 
vertical axis; the two ends of the wire coil are con- 
nected into the ship's regular radio circuit. At fixed 
and designated wireless stations on shore signals of 
specified pitch, intensity, and frequency are sent out 
at regular intervals. Thus, for example, Tuckerton 
may send signals in groups of three dots and three 
dashes alternating, with an interval of ten seconds 
between each group, and this signal ma}f be going 
out from Tuckerton continuously, day and night, 
with a wave length of six hundred meters. Brooklyn 
Navy- Yard may use a different grouping or send 
single dashes spaced a given number of seconds 
apart. From Sayville still another compass signal 
is used, from Arlington another, and so on until 
every important wireless station in the world is send- 
ing through the ether at all times, day or night, com- 
pass signals which indicate to every wireless operator 
who has the published, code before him just where the 
signals come from. 

The captain desires to know his position, bis 
latitude and longitude. He asks "Sparks," his wire- 
less operator, to listen in with his wireless compass. 
The big compass coil is connected up, the operator 
adjusts his receiving apparatus to the six-hundred - 
meter wave length of the Tuckerton compass signal, 
let us say, and instantly he hears the buzz — dot, dash, 
dot, dash, dot, dash — of Tuckerton. Every five 
seconds the Tuckerton signal is repeated. He rotates 
the big coil, the sound grows fainter; he rotates it in 
the other direction and the sound becomes stronger. 
In a second or two he has found the position of the 
coil at which the Tuckerton signal sounds strongest 
and clearest. The compass shows the coil pointing 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 253 

in a certain direction, and he reports that direction 
as the bearing of Tuckerton. So accurate and unerr- 
ing is this device that it tells to the fraction of a degree 
the exact direction from which the radio signals are 
being received. Now the operator adjusts his receiv- 
ing set to the Sayville wave length ; instantly he picks 
up the Sayville compass signal, and, by the same 
process, gets the compass bearing of Sayville with 
relation to the ship. It is the work of but a moment 
to project both bearings on a chart and determine 
to the fraction of a minute the exact latitude and 
longitude. This can be done as well when the ship 
is in mid-Pacific, two thousand miles from the nearest 
land, as when it is crawling up the coast toward New 
York. 

The practical application of the radio compass was 
demonstrated by the navy in the closing months of 
the war, and the extension of the system to cover the 
entire world was begun early in 19 19. The expense 
is trifling, the cost of the compass coil carried on 
board ship being very small. While devised as a 
war-time measure, to make it possible for ships to 
navigate even when lighthouse lights were extin- 
guished in order to deceive the enemy, it is difficult to 
imagine anything of greater ultimate usefulness to 
peaceful commerce. A precisely similar apparatus 
on a smaller scale has been tried out as an aid to 
aerial navigation, and by this means aircraft have 
been enabled to return directly to their home landing 
field in absolute darkness. 

Ships not equipped with the compass coil are also 
enabled to find their positions. Signals from ship to 
shore are received at many ports now equipped with 
similar means of determining the direction from which 
the impulses come. Thus a captain may get by 



254 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

wireless a cross - bearing from Sayville and New 
Brunswick, let us say, and quickly ascertain how 
close he is to New York. 

By means of another Yankee development of 
radio-telegraphy it has been made possible for sub- 
marines under water to receive radio signals sent 
from shore and to transmit signals while submerged. 
James H. Rogers, a scientist of Hyattsville, Mary- 
land, working in collaboration with Navy Department 
engineers, demonstrated that radio impulses hurled 
into the air from a transmitting station and deflected 
toward the earth do not become dissipated on striking 
land or water, but continue to flow in straight lines 
through the earth and through the seas as through 
the air. By the Rogers system messages were sent 
from and received in deep holes and caves, and 
by means of a very simple and crude apparatus 
clearly intelligible radio signals have been received 
at a distance of two miles under water. While the 
Rogers system has not been developed to the point 
where it seems likely to do away with the high towers 
for long-distance sending, it definitely eliminates a 
large part of the cost of installing receiving stations, 
and by making towers unnecessary for short distances 
may have a wide application in the development of 
commercial radio-telegraphy. Moreover, static in- 
terference due to disturbing electrical conditions in 
the atmosphere is entirely eliminated. Because of 
this advantage, the navy's receiving station at New 
Orleans, where communication is maintained with 
ships in Southern waters swept by frequent electrical 
storms, uses the underground apparatus with marked 
success. 

I have spoken of Marconi's comparison of wireless 
to witchcraft. Savoring perhaps more of witchcraft 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 255 

than any other single phase of wireless development 
is the control at a distance of ships, torpedoes, and 
even aircraft by means of radio impulses. This, too, 
is a distinctly Yankee trick. John Hays Hammond, 
Jr., son of the famous mining engineer, had been ex- 
perimenting in this direction. Some time before the 
war Mr. Hammond, in the presence of a number of 
navy officers, had directed from the shore by means of 
wireless impulses a small boat which he navigated 
around the harbor of Gloucester, Massachusetts, 
without the slightest difficulty. So valuable did this 
appear that Mr. Hammond was asked to carry on his 
further experiments in collaboration with government 
experts. 

The Joint Army and Navy Board of Inventions 
reported early in 191 9 that Mr. Hammond had 
demonstrated that it is completely possible to control 
not only surface craft, but a vessel entirely sub- 
merged, except with antennas projecting above the 
surface, and the War Department asked Congress for 
an appropriation of $417,000 for the construction of 
such a craft. Mr. Hammond's patents have been 
taken from the Patent Office and placed in the secret 
files of the government. No other nation possesses 
this secret, which would make it possible to direct 
a ship loaded with explosives, a submarine without a 
crew, or a torpedo, against a hostile ship either from 
a shore station or a naval vessel. 

For peace-time service, however, the wireless tele- 
phone and the radio compass are the two triumphs of 
Yankee ingenuity in radio communication that carry 
promise of greatest usefulness. It is not difficult to 
conceive of many important uses of the wireless 
telephone. An important use of the airplane is ex- 
pected to be in the Forest Patrol Service. From 



256 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

an airplane the beginning of a forest fire can be de- 
tected and the observer can telephone to all the forest 
patrols in the vicinity of the blaze, giving them the 
exact location of the fire and thus making it possible 
to save millions of feet of timber and perhaps thou- 
sands of human lives. And a similar extension of the 
wireless compass system to include not only the 
approaches to ports, but all the oceans, will make 
navigation, even under the most adverse conditions, 
as simple as finding one's way under the electric lights 
of Broadway. 



XIV 

COTTON BALLOONS AND FIRE-PROOF DIRIGIBLES 

BECAUSE so much has been said and written 
about military and naval airplanes and flying- 
boats the impression prevails that the dirigible bal- 
loon has proved a failure and that lighter-than-air 
types of aircraft are of no importance. Quite the 
contrary is true. The so-called "sausage" type of 
captive balloon is one of the most important elements 
in the observation service of war on land, as is the 
kite balloon, which is sent up from the deck of a ship 
for observation at sea. The dirigible itself is regarded 
by many competent authorities as holding possi- 
bilities for the future of aerial navigation excelling 
in commercial importance those of the airplane, while 
it is not to be denied that the German Zeppelins did 
far more damage and proved a greater menace in the 
Great War than all the German airplanes. 

It is highly significant that among the peace con- 
ditions imposed upon Germany by the Treaty of 
Versailles is the rigid stipulation against the con- 
struction or maintenance of Zeppelins or any other 
type of dirigible. Moreover, it was disclosed, after 
the termination of hostilities, that the British govern- 
ment had adopted the Zeppelin or rigid type of dirig- 
ible balloon and had actually constructed a craft of 
this sort, a larger and more powerful balloon than 
anything Germany had ever produced. This craft, 



258 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the "R-34," made a successful voyage from the 
British Islands to the United States and back in the 
summer of 1919. A very important part of our own 
Navy Department's program for the future consists 
in material additions to the fleet of dirigible balloons. 
Up to the end of the war we had not built in this 
country any dirigibles of the rigid or Zeppelin type, 
but we had acquired a considerable fleet of non-rigid 
dirigibles, known on both sides of the ocean by the 
slangy nickname of ' ' blimps. ' ' And it is due to Yankee 
ingenuity that the dirigible balloon is now the safest 
of all types of aircraft. 

Instead of the dirigible being a failure, the German 
Zeppelins were in every respect, except that of extreme 
vulnerability to direct attack, a great success. With 
two exceptions, every one of the Zeppelins that was 
brought down by the Allies during the war was 
destroyed by being set on fire in midair. Nothing 
could be a worse fire-insurance risk than the Zeppelin, 
with its huge gas-bag filled with the most inflammable 
of all gases, hydrogen. But until Yankee resourceful- 
ness discovered a means of producing a gas which 
would answer the same purpose without being in- 
flammable, hydrogen was the one lighter-than-air 
substance that was available in large quantities for 
balloon purposes. And this meant that the dirigible 
balloon, although capable of navigating in storms in 
which airplanes could not venture, free from the risk 
of sudden falls and capable of lifting enormously 
greater useful loads than any airplane yet devised, 
was, nevertheless, an extremely perilous craft. In 
war a single incendiary bullet piercing the envelope 
of a military balloon ignites the hydrogen and the 
balloon crashes to earth in flames. Even in peace a 
single spark from defective electric wiring or a burst 



2 6o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

of flame from the engine exhaust might wreck the 
airship with the loss of all on board. 

To obtain a practicable substitute for hydrogen 
had been regarded as impossible until the problem 
was solved by American scientists. Toward the end 
of the nineteenth century Lord Rayleigb and Sir 
William Ramsay had discovered in atmospheric air a 
gas previously unknown, to which they gave the 
name of helium. Helium is only slightly heavier than 
hydrogen, and it is entirely non-inflammable. It 
exists in atmospheric air in the proportion of i to 
250,000 by volume — -that is to say, in 250,000 cubic 
feet of air there is diffused 1 cubic foot of helium. It 
had also been found in certain rare minerals, but its 
production had been only in the minutest quantities, 
at a laboratory cost of about $1,700 per cubic foot. 
When it is considered that the cubical contents of the 
new British R-34 are, roughly, about 1,500,000 cubic 
feet, the cost of the helium gas necessary to fill it 
would run into the thousands of millions of dollars. 
Sir William Ramsay, however, early in the war urged 
upon the British Admiralty that efforts be made to 
discover new sources of helium gas, and expressed his 
belief that somewhere a natural source of supply of 
this useful element could be obtained. In the pursuit 
of the investigation that followed it was discovered 
that the natural gas obtained from the Canadian 
field centering at Petrolia, Ontario, contained one- 
third of 1 per cent, of helium. 

This gave the clue to American investigators. 
When the United States entered the war the problem 
of finding an adequate supply of helium and devising 
methods of isolating it economically was turned over 
to the United States Bureau of Mines. In co-opera- 
tion with the Navy Department, chemists, geologists, 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 261 

and mineralogists undertook the examination and 
testing of natural gas produced from wells in every 
part of the United States. In northern Texas, near 




AN ARMY OBSERVATION BALLOON OF THE SAUSAGE TYPE 



the Oklahoma line, were found gases which contained 
a little more than 1 per cent, of the element. A ten- 
year lease was taken by the government on the 
gas-wells in this field. Pipe lines were laid to carry 
the gas to Fort Worth and other plants were con- 

18 



262 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

structed alongside of commercial plants which were 
already extracting oxygen and nitrogen from the 
natural gas. A third plant was built by the Bureau 
of Mines at Petrolia, Texas, adjacent to the gas-wells. 

Aiter the presence of helium in these Texas gases 
had been determined the problem of a method of 
extraction remained to be solved. Under the direc- 
tion of Dr. Frederick G. Cottrell, the chief metal- 
lurgist of the Bureau of Mines, to whose successful 
development of a method of extracting potash from 
cement-kiln dust I have already referred, a process 
was developed, consisting of liquefying the gas at a 
low temperature and distilling off the other con- 
stituents, leaving the stubborn and inert helium be- 
hind. To the surprise of every one, it was found that 
helium could be produced at a cost of not more than 
ten cents a cubic foot instead of $1,700, which every 
cubic foot previously produced had cost. This 
brought the cost of filling a large dirigible down to a 
few thousand dollars, and for "sausages" and kite 
balloons the gas cost became almost negligible, in 
view of the elimination of risk. 

Small balloons filled with helium were sent up near 
Washington and fired at from airplanes with in- 
cendiary bullets. These bullets passed completely 
through them without producing any effect. Just 
before the signing of the armistice there had been 
produced 147,000 cubic feet of American helium 
ready for shipment to France. A small quantity had 
actually reached Europe, and only the signing of the 
armistice prevented the carrying out of a plan for 
sending a fleet of fire-proof dirigibles to drop bombs on 
Germany from a height of three or four miles. 

One important result of the obtaining of a sufficient 
quantity of low-price helium is the redesigning of 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 263 




A NAVY KITE BALLOON 

By this means observers can be sent aloft from the deck of a ship to a height of 

a mile, if necessary, and discover enemy ships at a distance of thirty to forty miles, 

or even more. 



dirigibles. Heretofore every aircraft of this type, 
from Zeppelins down to "blimps," has had its cargo- 
and passenger-carrying hulls and cabins suspended 
from the gas-bag ; the engines and propellers have also 



264 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

been hung below the gas-bag. This was necessary 
because of the danger involved in placing the engines 
too close to the gas. In the new-type rigid dirigibles 
the quarters of the crew and the engines themselves 
can be provided for inside the gas-bag; the propeller 
shaft can run through the main structure and the pro- 
pellers be attached at the bow or stern of the gas-bag 
itself instead of below it. 

Although the helium discovery was not made in time 
to be of actual service in war, it will, beyond doubt, 
prove immensely valuable in the development of 
peaceful commerce. Other problems involved in the 
building of the enormous number of observation and 
kite balloons necessitated by our military and naval 
program were, however, solved early in our war career 
by American scientists and technicians. 

In order to make use of the balloon for war 
purposes the government had practically to re- 
vive a dead industry. The type of observation 
balloon adopted by our army was that designed by 
Captain Caquot of the French army, after both 
Germany and the Allies had had a year or more of 
experience with observation balloons. Balloon fabric 
was not manufactured in America, and even the ma- 
terials with which to make it were not readily avail- 
able in open market. But just as a method was found 
of substituting sea island cot con for linen in the manu- 
facture of airplanes, so a fiber was found from which 
a cloth of the requisite fineness and strength for bal- 
loon purposes could be made. This fiber is the long- 
staple cotton grown in southern Arizona, in a section 
which, up to a few years ago, was regarded as agricult- 
urally worthless, but which through irrigation and 
cultivation has developed into the greatest cotton- 
producing section of the whole world, in the number 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 265 

of pounds per acre, while the very finest grades are 
readily grown there. 

The Goodyear Rubber Company, of Akron, Ohio, 
which had done more than any other American con- 
cern or institution to promote interest in ballooning, 
established its own cotton plantation in Arizona and, 









.4-:> ; 


* l_»*^<3' 




f J8MML- 


jisM^EI-tikinjtt im._ 


m 


,.' . — 


_ ■ . 





THE BIGGEST YANKEE DIRIGIBLE 

The C-S started for a voyage across the Atlantic and reached Newfoundland safely 
in a single flight from Rockaway Beach, Long Island. There being no shelter at 
Newfoundland the craft was anchored by six two-inch hawsers. A sudden gate 
parted the moorings and drove the C-5 out to sea, where she was lost. Fortunately, 
no one was on board when the catastrophe occurred. 



in co-operation with army and navy authorities, mills 
were set to work to spin and weave this wonderful 
fiber into a cloth so fine and at the same time so 
strong and so nearly gas-tight as to be comparable 
only to silk in its texture. Even after being treated 
with a rubber solution to make it absolutely gas-tight 
this new American balloon fabric is almost as thin and 
delicate as a lady's handkerchief. Then, too, the 
actual construction of the observation balloons, the 
cutting and sewing of the fabric, required special and 
intensive training of an army of skilled workers, 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 267 

One of the most important contributions of Amer- 
ican ingenuity to military observation is a method 
devised of running a telephone wire through the center 
of the steel cable by which the observation balloon is 
anchored. This cable is attached to a windlass and 
hauled in to bring the balloon down, or let out if the 
observer needs to go to a greater elevation. As the 
observer must be in constant communication with the 
headquarters of the artillery detachment whose fire 
he is directing, uninterrupted telephone communica- 
tion is essential. With the telephone wires separate 
from the cable, two or more windlasses always re- 
quired attention; with the wire in the middle of the 
cable it is not only less likely to be damaged, cutting 
off communication, but the whole operation of the 
observation balloon is greatly simplified. 



XV 



MOTORIZING THE ARMY 



UP to the oucbreak of the European War in 19 14 
the speed with which a nation at war could move 
its army from point to point was limited by the march- 
ing speed and endurance of its infantry units. Cav- 
alry could move a little faster than infantry for short 
spurts, though on long marches men on foot can cover 
more ground in a given time than horses. Artillery 
could move at about the same speed as infantry on 
foot. Only in Germany, where the railroads have been 
constructed with an eye to their military usefulness 
as well as their commercial value, was it possible at 
the beginning of the war to move considerable bodies 
of troops more than twelve to fifteen miles a day 
without running a serious risk of separating them from 
their lines of communication and supplies, and leaving 
them without adequate artillery support. 

While the motor-propelled road vehicles had been 
in common use for ten years and more prior to the 
opening of hostilities, their application to military 
purposes had been so completely neglected that none 
of the Allied countries, when the war began, had either 
motor-trucks for the transport of troops and supplies, 
motor- vehicles for the use of officers, or motor- tractors 
for its artillery. The first hundred thousand troops 
of the British regular army, "The Old Contempti- 
bles," were rushed across Belgium in motor buses, so 



270 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

recently diverted from their peaceful traffic in the 
streets of London that they carried with them to the 
battle-fields of Flanders such signs as "Piccadilly 
Circus," "Trafalgar Square," and "Use Pears' Soap." 
France sent its artillerymen out in Paris taxicabs to 




THE LIBERTY TRUCK, DESIGNED BY ARMY ENGINEERS 



turn the flank of the advancing Huns at the first 
battle of the Marne. One of the very biggest of all 
the unsolved war problems, it was demonstrated at the 
very beginning of hostilities, was that of providing 
swifter means of transportation for men, guns, am- 
munition, and supplies. 

In the solving of this problem both for the Allies 
and for our own army, Yankee ingenuity played an 
important part. While no army had been completely 
motorized at the signing of the armistice — more horses 




THE FAMOUS F. W. D., OR FOUR-WHEEL-DRIVE TRUCK 

Devised by army engineers and built in huge numbers. It can go where ordinary 
trucks are hopelessly stalled, and carry a three-ton load over almost insurmountable 

obstacles. 




TEN-TON CATERPILLAR TRUCK 



272 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

and mules were used in this war than probably in all 
previous wars put together — -the army which the 
United States was preparing to throw into the balance 
and the very threat of which turned the scale against 
Germany would have been unquestionably the most 
mobile military force that had ever taken the field 
in war, and this in spite of the fact that up to the 
entrance of the United States into the war in the spring 
of 191 7 we had made practically no advance since the 
Civil War in the matter of army transport. General 
Pershing's Mexican expedition in 19 16 still relied upon 
horses and mules for transport; the forces on the 
Mexican border had a few passenger-cars for officers' 
use and a few commercial motor- trucks of aiflerent 
types, but in the army motor- vehicles were still 
regarded as unreliable and experimental and it was 
not until we found ourselves plunged into the Euro- 
pean conflict that we even began to prepare a pro- 
gram of motorization for the army. So rapidly did 
the development of motor-transport proceed, how- 
ever, that in August, 191 8, when the country had been 
sixteen months at war, there was established the 
Motor Transport Corps, a new and independent 
branch of army activities, charged with the control 
of the entire field of mechanical transport which, by 
this time, had become recognized as equally important 
with the other staff corps of the army. 

Under the control of the Motor Transport Corps, at 
the termination of hostilities, were some 50,000 motor- 
vehicles, while with the application of mechanical 
motive power the artillery had been developed to a 
point where, in the expected spring and summer cam- 
paign of 1919, no unit, no matter how swiftly it might 
travel in mo tor- vehicles, could move faster than the 
guns could keep up with it. 




THE AMERICAN-BUILT RENAULT TANK 



274 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

In the whole program of military motorization the 
most sensational development of the entire war, al- 
though first practically applied by the British, was 
distinctly a product of Yankee ingenuity. This was 
the "tank," which was, in fact, a small, mobile fort 
mounted on caterpillar tracks. The caterpillar is the 
one distinctively American contribution to land trans- 
port. Every other type of vehicle, from the wheel- 
barrow to the automobile, had its origin elsewhere. It 
was an American inventor who conceived the idea of 
mounting a traction engine on parallel, flexible, end- 
less tracks, so that it could move over plowed fields or 
grades impassable to a wheeled vehicle. The cater- 
pillar tractor for farm purposes had been in successful 
use in America for a number of years prior to the war. 
Colonel Swinton of the British army conceived the 
idea of building completely inclosed, tanklike bodies 
which, when supplied with caterpillar traction, could, 
traverse the shell-torn areas of the battle-field, climb 
across trenches and up and down embankments, and 
bring artillerymen and machine-gunners, themselves 
protected behind steel walls, into close range with the 
enemy's infantry. 

At the beginning of America s participation in the 
war one of the first steps undertaken was to provide 
an adequate supply of tanks for the use of our army. 
Since the British army by this time had in operation 
enormous factory facilities for the manufacture of 
tanks, a contract was made between the United States 
and Great Britain by which we were to manufacture 
the motors and provide ordnance for a large number 
of tanks; the structures and their mechanism were to 
be manufactured in England. With the successful 
development of the Liberty motor, however, experi- 
ments were begun with tanks adapted to the use of 




SEVEN-INCH GUN ON RAILWAY MOUNT 
This mount was built for use against submarines in the raids along our coast. 




TWELVE-INCH 50-CALIBER LONG-RANGE GUN ON SLIDING RAILWAY 

MOUNT 

The power and range of this mount are not exceeded by any railway mount in the 
world. Its range is in excess of twenty-eight miles. 



276 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

this engine. The huge 3 5 -ton tank "America" was 
the most successful of these, and by the end of the 
war we had just begun to manufacture a quantity of 
these large tanks. America also adopted the French 
Renault tank, building a quantity of these on the 
French model, and later adapted this model to Amer- 
ican methods of manufacture for the production of a 
faster and lighter type of tank mounting two machine- 
guns instead of one. 

America's most ingenious contribution in the way 
of tanks, however, was the Ford baby tank. The 
idea of a light-weight, speedy, miniature fort, small 
enough almost to follow a squirrel track through the 
woods, appealed strongly to Henry Ford, who began 
the experimental development of this device in 191 7. 
In June, 1918, I had the opportunity to see the tests 
of the first completed Ford tank of the type finally 
decided upon. "Nimble" is the word that best 
describes this miniature engine of war. It has been 
said of the Ford car that it will climb anything — even 
the side of a house. The tank literally did exactly 
that! It climbed a sloping structure at an angle of 
less than 45 degrees from the vertical without the 
slightest difficulty. It went down embankments that 
were almost straight up and down, stood on its nose 
in ditches four and five feet deep and backed out 
again without injury, scooted at twenty miles an hour 
over rough, plowed ground, stopped and turned in- 
stantly in its own length, and from a little distance 
irresistibly reminded one of a playful animal disport- 
ing itself — an animal combining, as it were, the quali- 
ties of the mud -turtle and the rabbit. 

Inside the Ford tank are two men and one machine- 
gun. The machinery consists of two ordinary Ford 
engines, one for each side of the caterpillar mechanism. 



i 




CATERPILLAR TRACTOR DRAWING A 6-INCH GUN 




LIGHT CATERPILLAR TRACTOR FOR HAULING 3-INCH GUN 



19 



278 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

By running one engine forward and reversing the other 
the baby tank can be made to spin like a top. The 
machine-gun is so mounted that the gunner is per- 
fectly protected against anything short of artillery 
fire, while himself able to pump lead in any direction. 

It was in the application of the caterpillar principle 
to other tractive transportation purposes that Yankee 
ingenuity scored even more heavily than in the matter 
of tanks. With good roads, or even passably good 
roads, the motor-truck mounted on ordinary wheels 
is adequate for all practical purposes. With bad 
roads, or no roads at all — and there is never a guar- 
anty that an army in movement is going to find roads 
exactly where it wants them — the advantages of the 
caterpillar are obvious, since it lays its own road as 
it goes along. The handicap of the caterpillar, as 
previously developed, had been its low speed; four 
miles an hour was fast enough for agricultural tractor 
purposes and nobody had tried to build caterpillars 
that would move any faster. It was merely a matter 
of mechanical ingenuity and design, and before we 
had been a year at war our engineers had speeded 
up the caterpillar to twenty miles an hour. In the 
autumn of 1918 I rode across the Aberdeen proving- 
ground near Baltimore in a caterpillar motor-truck, 
running a race with the Assistant Secretary of War, 
Benedict Crowell, who was riding on a caterpillar gun- 
caisson. Our speedometers registered above sixteen 
miles an hour over very rough ground ; the jolting and 
jarring were very much less than would have been the 
case with wheeled vehicles on the same sort of terrain. 

Perhaps the ingenious idea of mounting heavy 
artillery on caterpillar carriages ranks first among the 
artillery innovations introduced into warfare by 
America. An 8-inch howitzer is a terrific weapon. 




SQUADRON OF AMERICAN RENAULT TANKS GOING INTO ACTION 





"■&*?&& 



. .,* v 



AMERICAN TANK IN ACTION 



2 8o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

Twenty horses are ordinarily used to pull one, and 
by such means it can be moved very slowly indeed. 
Mounted on a caterpillar carriage, it can go anywhere 
as fast as an army can move, even faster, and it can 
make its own road, not only through underbrush, but 
through thick woods. I saw this caterpillar-mounted 
howitzer move through a patch of woods at Aberdeen, 
bearing down big trees by its own weight and the 
force of its impact. One tree measured seventeen 
inches through at the butt; many of them were more 
than ten inches in diameter. The gun moved through 
the woods as easily as an elephant through a bamboo 
jungle. 

Caterpillar tractors, speeded up for hauling guns of 
all sizes and for ammunition caissons, were developed. 
Out of the experience obtained in the application of 
the caterpillar principle to all sorts of purposes it is 
obvious that many new applications of this distinc- 
tively American type of vehicle will be made in peace- 
time commerce. In rough or sparsely settled country, 
where the amount of traffic does not justify the ex- 
pense of building and maintaining good roads, the 
speeded-up caterpillar provides means of transporta- 
tion peculiarly adapted to such pioneer service. In 
rough and mountainous country, where ordinary 
mo tor- trucks cannot be used, the caterpillar trucks 
can be utilized for hauling ore from isolated mines and 
for similar purposes. 

America's chief contribution to the problem of the 
motor-truck in war, apart from the caterpillar devel- 
opment, was the four-wheel- drive truck. This type of 
vehicle, in which the motive power is applied equally 
to all wheels instead of only to the two rear wheels, 
thoroughly demonstrated its war usefulness. In ad- 
dition to the better distribution of tractive power, it 




EIGHT-INCH GUN ON RAILWAY MOUNT 




SIXTEEN-INCH HOWITZER RAILWAY MOUNT SHOWN IN FIRING POSITION 

AT MAXIMUM ANGLE OF ELEVATION 

This is one of the most powerful howitzers in the world. 



282 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

has the advantage of being able to move in either 
direction with equal ease and speed, a consideration 
often of the greatest usefulness on narrow roadways 
where there is no room to turn. 

More emphatically than in any previous war the 
importance of artillery was emphasized in this one. 
All artillery development, except that of guns per- 
manently mounted in fortifications or on floating gun- 
platforms, such as battle-ships, had been limited, as I 
have said, by the speed and power of the horse. The 
horse can pull continuously about 650 pounds on 
level ground. It took a team of six horses to pull a 
3 -inch gun before this war, and indeed almost up to 
the end of the war this size of gun was the largest that 
could be regarded as mobile artillery, in the sense of 
being able to fire a few shots and then change its 
position quickly before the enemy could get its 
range. The caterpillar not only made the 3 -inch gun 
more mobile, but made guns up to 8-inch caliber 
mobile artillery. 

Yankee ingenuity went even farther than that. 
When the armistice was signed we had on the Euro- 
pean front 14-inch rifles with a range of nearly 
thirty miles that were almost as completely mobile 
as the 3 -inch guns of five years before ; we had even 
heavier weapons than these, 16-inch howitzers, lack- 
ing but an inch of the bore of the "Big Berthas," the 
4 2 -centimeter Skoda howitzers with which the Hun 
battered down the supposedly impregnable fortifica- 
tions of Liege at the outset of the war. We had 12- 
inch guns 50 feet long, capable of throwing 2,000-pound 
shells twenty miles, and so completely mobile that 
one of them could be advanced to firing position, fired 
half a dozen times, and removed to a point of safety 
or another fighting position several miles away within 




THIS IS ONE OF THE SURPRISES WE HAD IN STORE FOR FRITZ, 
AN EIGHT-INCH HOWITZER ON A CATERPILLAR MOUNT 




TWELVE-INCH MORTAR ON RAILWAY MOUNT 

This picture shows the heavy mortar on railway mount at maximum elevation in 
position for firing against ammunition dumps and dugouts. 



284 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the space of an hour. We had larger numbers still 
of great 7-inch guns and of 12-inch mortars, all equally 
mobile. 

These were the guns, howitzers, and mortars on 
railway mounts. By the time America entered the 
war it had become obvious that one of the most press- 
ing needs of the Allies was more heavy artillery. Our 
army canvassed the supply and found 464 heavy guns, 
ranging in size from the 7 -inch navy guns to 16-inch 
howitzers. There were 6 12-inch naval guns that 
had been manufactured in this country for the 
Chilean government; there were 96 8-inch, 129 10- 
inch, and 49 12-inch seacoast-defense guns, and 150 
12-inch mortars. All of these that could be spared 
were taken and the manufacture of other guns was 
pressed, while railway mounts were constructed for 
these different types of weapons. The problem that 
had to be solved was first to build a railway carriage 
sufficiently strong to carry the mounted guns, then to 
adapt this carriage to either standard-gage or narrow- 
gage tracks, and then to provide means for absorbing 
the tremendous recoil pressure at the moment of 
firing. 

This latter problem was solved in two ways. Some 
of the guns were so mounted that, by an ingenious 
arrangement of jacks, the gun crew, once the carriage 
had reached the point from which the gun was to be 
fired, could in a minute literally lift the carriage off the 
tracks, leaving it supported by the jacks, each of 
which had a sliding contact with the rails. By this 
means, when the gun was fired, instead of the carriage 
rolling thirty or forty feet along the tracks and requir- 
ing a recalculation of the aim and trajectory, it slid 
but a few inches, not enough in most cases to disturb 
the predetermined aim. For the smaller railway 




A BLACKSMITH - SHOP, FORGE, ANVIL, AND ALL, AND AN ELECTRIC 
WELDING OUTFIT EyUIP THIS UNIT OF THE ROLLING MACHINE-SHOP 




A PORTABLE SAWMILL CONSTITUTES ONE UNIT OF THE MACHINE-SHOP 
ON WHEELS 



286 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

mounted guns braces were provided for the carriages 
so that the whole apparatus was firmly held in a 
fixed position. This method, however, involved a 
great deal more time and labor in getting the gun ready 
to fire. 

All of the guns mounted by the army on railway 
mounts were so fixed that they could be fired in almost 




ONE OF THE UNITS OF THE MACHINE-SHOP ON WHEELS; THIS TRAILER 
TRUCK CARRIES A DRILL-PRESS AND A POWER SHAPER 



any direction; the 7 -inch navy rifles were mounted on 
pedestals set on the gun-car in such a way that they 
could be fired in any direction around a complete 
circle. These guns could likewise be depressed so as 
to fire from an elevation at a submarine offshore, it 
being the purpose to use them for coast-defense work 
particularly. 

The largest American guns that actually reached 
the front were five of the 14-inch navy guns, mounted 
and operated by the navy. These guns were placed 
on a specially designed type of railway mount and 
rendered effective service in the last few weeks before 
the signing of the armistice. 




THE GENERATOR MOUNTED ON A TRAILER TRUCK 

The generator has its own direct-coupled gasolene-engine and furnishes electric 
current to operate all the other machines that make up the machine-shop on wheels. 




NO MACHINE-SHOP IS COMPLETE WITHOUT A STOCK-ROOM FOR MA- 
TERIALS AND SPARE PARTS; THE MACHINE-SHOP ON WHEELS HAS 
THIS UNIT, TOO 



288 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

Like the rest of American war preparations, the 
gigantic plan for mobile artillery of every size and 
caliber was cut short just as its important elements 
were approaching the peak of production. When it is 
considered that in this work, as in many other lines of 
military preparation, absolutely new ground had to be 
broken, plants equipped, workmen trained, and every- 
thing done as though nothing of the sort had ever 
been attempted before, the success actually achieved 
appears as a triumph of American manufacturing 
resourcefulness. 

Just as the war ended we had finally perfected a 
method by which a machine-shop, equipped to repair 
anything from heavy artillery to a mule's halter, 
could travel with the army and keep pace with even 
the speediest of its motorized units. This traveling 
machine-shop consisted of three motor-tractor trucks, 
each hauling three trailers. On each vehicle, tractor 
and trailer alike, was mounted some part of a complete 
machine-shop unit. There weie lathes, drill-presses, 
planers, and other power-driven machine-tools, each 
having its own electric motor; on one truck was 
mounted an electric generator, direct-connected to a 
gasolene-engine. This furnished electric power for 
the whole plant and current for searchlights to enable 
even the most delicate machine operations to be done 
at night. Air-compressors for certain classes of work 
were mounted on another truck; one carried a com- 
plete blacksmith-shop, another a harness-shop with 
a power sewing-machine. On another was a car- 
penter's complete equipment, while a most important 
part of the outfit was the traveling stock-room, a 
truck fitted with innumerable drawers, bins, racks, 
and cupboards for carrying every sort of material 
that might be required for repairs in the field. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 289 

The platforms of all the vehicles in the unit were 
of equal height, and all had sides and ends hinged so 
they could be lowered to a horizontal position, and 
supported by props, making extension platforms af- 
fording ample working space around each group of 
machines. 



XVI 

YANKEE WEAPONS 

THE backbone of an army is its infantrymen, and 
the weapon of the infantryman is his rifle. I 
do not think the most captious critic will dispute the 
statement that the American infantryman, taking 
him by and large, is the best marksman in the world, 
and it would be unsafe, in the presence of an American 
doughboy, to dispute the assertion that the American 
infantry rifle, the Springfield, model 1903, is the best 
rifle ever made, with the Springfield, model 191 7, the 
modified Enfield, the only other infantry weapon that 
even approaches our standard arm for all-around 
military use. 

Just as the pioneer life of our forefathers compelled 
the development of skill with the rifle and established 
an American tradition of marksmanship which has 
not been permitted to die out, so American inventors 
have been responsible for every important improve- 
ment in small-arms for more than a century. Even 
the automatic pistol, credit for which was claimed 
originally by Germany, was a deliberate theft of a 
Yankee idea, as any one who cares to inspect the 
models in the Patent Office at Washington may 
prove to his own satisfaction. The first improvement 
over the old-fashioned flint-lock, the percussion cap, 
was a Yankee invention. So was the breech-loading 
rifle, and likewise the repeating rifle; the revolver was 



292 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

an American invention, and so, too, was the machine- 
gun. 

At the beginning of the war in Europe the demand 
for rifles for the British, French, and Russian armies 
was so far greater than their manufacturers were able 
to supply that they called upon America for help; 
so when this country entered the war we had a number 
of well-equipped factories that had been for over a 




Top — SPRINGFIELD, MODEL I917 (MODIFIED ENFIELD); ROLLED 

BAYONET, MODEL I9I7 

Bottom — SPRINGFIELD, MODEL I903; BAYONET, MODEL 1905 



year producing rifles in enormous quantities for these 
foreign governments. We had on hand about 600,000 
of the model 1903 Springfield, with manufacturing 
capacity at our government arsenals of only about 
700 a day. To adopt the British weapon would have 
involved changing our ammunition. The problem 
was solved by making certain modifications in the 
British Enfield rifle so that it took the same ammuni- 
tion and the same sights as the old Springfield. This 
modified Enfield became the Springfield, model 191 7, 
and with it we armed nearly three million soldiers. 

Yankee ingenuity had even a better opportunity 
than this to play its part in the equipment of our 
infantrymen. In this war as never before the ma- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 293 

chine-gun was one of the most important weapons 
used by all the armies in the field. Two distinctly 
American types of machine-guns ranked among the 
most important American triumphs of the war. These 
are the Lewis and the Browning guns. Another 
American machine-gun, the Marlin, became the 
standard arm for airplane pilots. The original ma- 




LEWIS MACHINE-GUN, MODEL I917 

chine-gun, the invention of Dr. Richard J. Gatling, 
was brought out in 1861, and was really a revolving 
rifle consisting of a number of barrels rotating around 
the central axis and firing in turn. It was another 
American inventor, who later became a British sub- 
ject, Sir Hiram Maxim, who developed the single- 
barrel machine-gun, operating automatically by its 
own recoil. But when the war in Europe began there 
had been developed two machine-guns which had all 
the advantages of the rapid-firing mechanism of these 
and similar weapons, and besides were light enough 
so one man could carry them. These were the 
French Benet-Mercier and the American Lewis guns. 
The Lewis gun, although the invention of Col. Isaac 
N. Lewis, of the United States army, had been re- 

20 



294 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

jected by the American military authorities, but 
adopted by the British, and large numbers of these 
guns were made in America for the British army in 
the early years of the war. The Lewis gun is dif- 
ferent from all other machine-guns in that the car- 
tridges, instead of being fed into the chamber from a 
web or strip, are fed from a magazine which revolves 
horizontally around a vertical axis. As developed 
for the use of American aircraft, the Lewis gun maga- 
zine carries ninety-six cartridges and can be fired at 
the rate of more than 300 shots a minute. 

The Lewis gun weighs only twenty-five pounds, this 
being one of its principal advantages over earlier 
types of machine-guns, which were water-cooled — • 
that is, the barrel was surrounded by a water-jacket 
to keep it from overheating when fired continuously. 
For aircraft use, where the firing is not continuous, 
but in short "bursts," so called, the cooling problem 
is not a serious one, and the Lewis gun proved ad- 
mirably adapted for this purpose. It may really be 
called the first successful air-cooled machine-gun; 
many previous attempts at an air-cooled machine-gun 
had been made by American and foreign inventors; 
all of these overheated when fired continuously for 
any length of time, some of them becoming so hot 
that the barrels became soft and bent out of shape. 

When the United States entered the war, then, we 
had the Lewis gun, which had not been officially 
adopted by the army, but which was being manu- 
factured in limited quantities in this country for the 
British government by the Savage Arms Corporation, 
of Utica, New York. There was also being manu- 
factured for the Russian government the old-fashioned 
type of Colt machine-gun, being made by the Marlin, 
Rockwell Corporation, at Syracuse, New York. The 




THE COLT DOUBLE-ACTION .45 -CALIBER REVOLVER 

The Yankee " six-shooter " that has been the standard side-arm of the American 
army for more than half a century. 







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1 


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THE COLT .45-CALIBER AUTOMATIC PISTOL 

The standard army weapon of this type carrying seven cartridges in the hollow 
butt. Another Yankee invention. 



296 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

facilities available for machine-gun production, how- 
ever, were extremely limited. Such as they were, they 
were taken over by the government, but the impor- 
tance of the machine-gun as an infantry arm had by 
this time become so evident that it was necessary to 
focus all possible efforts on the development of some 
type of gun that would answer all the purposes of 
modern warfare and at the same time be capable of 
production in huge quantities. 

In this emergency there came forward a man un- 
known to the general public, but known to manu- 
facturers of weapons throughout the world as a 
genius of rare order, whose inventive talents were 
responsible for almost every important improvement 
in small-arms for more than forty years — John M. 
Browning. His identity buried for more than four 
decades under the names of the great manufacturing 
corporations whose chief output was the product of 
his fertile brain, this square- jawed Yankee mechanical 
genius brought to the War Department early in May, 
1 91 7, three new types of machine-guns, each designed 
for a particular and specific, separate use, and each 
of them so far in advance of anything that had pre- 
viously been developed that it took less than a month 
of tests to determine their superiority and insure their 
adoption by the United States army as its standard 
machine-gun equipment. John M. Browning, who 
thus suddenly leaped into fame through the contro- 
versies in Congress and in the newspapers over the 
respective merits of his weapon and the Lewis gun, 
is the inventor of nearly every one of the Winchester 
rifles, from the model of 1873 to that of 1906. He 
invented the auto-loading shot-gun and the auto- 
loading rifle, known throughout the world by the 
name of the Remington Arms Company. He was 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 297 

responsible for the perfection of the Stevens 12 -gage 
repeating shot-gun. It was John M. Browning who 
invented the Colt automatic machine-gun, which had 
been our standard army weapon up to 191 7. He had 
designed all the Colt automatic pistols; he was the 




SMITH & WESSON DOUBLE- ACTION REVOLVER, CALIBER .45, MODEL I917 



patentee of the .4 5 -caliber automatic pistol, which 
was the standard side-arm of the United States army. 
None of his inventions was known in this country 
by his name, but in Belgium, where the manufacture 
of small-arms had been perfected long before the war 
to a higher degree than in any other country in the 
world, the name of Browning was synonymous with 
high-grade repeating rifles, shot-guns, and pistols, and 
in 1 914 the manufacture of the one-millionth Browning 
pistol in the Belgian National Armory at Liege had 
been celebrated by the bestowal upon the Yankee 
inventor of the Belgian Royal Order of King Leopold. 
The three types of Browning machine-gun are the 
"heavy" or water-cooled gun, the "light" air-cooled 



298 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

gun or automatic rifle, and the Browning airplane-gun. 
The water-cooled Browning gun weighs only twenty- 
five pounds, the lightest weight of any water-cooled 
machine-gun. The old Colt machine-gun, also Brown- 
ing's invention, depended for its automatic action 
upon the pressure of explosion gases operating against 
a piston. The new Browning gun uses the force of 
the recoil to operate the mechanism which automati- 
cally ejects the shell of the cartridge just fired, resets 
the firing mechanism, and feeds in a fresh cartridge. 
The only heavy machine-guns that had previously 
utilized the recoil for this purpose were the Maxim 
and the British Vickers. It is the ideal principle 
for rapid firing ; the gun automatically continues to 
fire as fast as cartridges can be fed into it from the 
web belt which carries the cartridges in loops. It will 
not stop firing until the cartridges are exhausted or 
the release of the trigger automatically blocks the 
firing mechanism. The old Maxim gun, regarded as 
perhaps the best of the water-cooled machine-guns, 
gave off puffs of steam as the water in the cooling 
jacket became heated; in the Boer War these puffs of 
steam enabled the sharp-sighted Boers to locate the 
British Maxim gunners and to pick them off with their 
deadly long-range rifles. The Browning gun has a 
completely inclosed water-circulating apparatus, so 
that no steam escapes into the air to betray the 
gunners' position. With its water-jacket filled the 
Browning heavy gun weighs only 36^ pounds, making 
it easily transportable by infantry. 

Simultaneously with the water-cooled gun, John M. 
Browning offered a light machine-gun or, more prop- 
erly speaking, an automatic rifle, weighing only fifteen 
pounds. This is a gun that can be fired from the 
shoulder and which will continue to fire automatically 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 299 

so long as the marksman keeps his finger on the trigger 
and the supply of cartridges is kept up. The car- 
tridges for the Browning automatic rifle are fed in in 
clips of twenty at a time; the twenty shots are fired 
in a quarter that number of seconds. It takes less 




HEAVY BROWNING MACHINE-GUN 



than a second to slip a new set into place. There 
had been automatic rifles before, but none that equaled 
the Browning in simplicity of construction and opera- 
tion or that compared with it in weight. The 15- 
pound gun, although nearly twice as heavy as the 
standard military rifle, is not too heavy for a strong 
man to fire efficiently from the shoulder. Many old- 



3 co YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

fashioned duck guns, as well as the elephant rifles used 
by African hunters, weigh more than this. 

The Browning aircraft rifle is in all essentials the 
Browning heavy machine-gun with water-jacket re- 
moved. As I have pointed out, an air-cooled ma- 
chine-gun can be used in aerial fighting, and this gun 
has the advantage for this purpose over the automatic 
rifle in that the cartridge supply from a continuous 
belt or web requires little or no attention from the 
aerial operator of the gun. For aircraft purposes the 
firing mechanism of the Browning gun was so altered 
as to double the rate of fire, and devices for synchro- 
nizing this gun for firing between the propeller blades 
were also perfected. The Browning airplane-gun, 
however, had not got into production sufficiently to 
equip our aerial forces by the time the armistice was 
signed. The Lewis gun became the standard arm 
for aerial warfare, with the Marlin machine-gun, a 
development of the old Colt gun, for use in fixed 
position in front of the pilot and synchronized with the 
propeller as I have described in a previous chapter. 

As in the case of every other important item of 
military equipment, America's problem had only just 
begun when the type and design of the Browning 
gun had been determined upon and accepted by the 
army. To manufacture these guns, as to manu- 
facture any other device requiring a multiplicity of 
precisely sized and carefully fitted parts, meant, first, 
an enormous work of preparation of drawings, ma- 
chines, and tools, the provision of a continuous supply 
of raw materials, and the enlistment of a veritable 
army of skilled workmen to operate the machines and 
assemble the finished parts. It was May, 191 8, before 
the first Browning automatic rifles were turned out 
by the Winchester Company, the first Browning heavy 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 301 

machine-gun by the Westinghouse and Remington 
companies, and June before the Colt Company had 
begun to produce these. By the end of July, 19 18, 
however, 10,000 heavy Brownings had been made, 




BROWNING TANK-GUN MOUNTED IN TANK 

and at the signing of the armistice there had been de- 
livered to the government 42,000 of the heavy Brown- 
ing guns and 52,238 light Browning automatic rifles. 
When, in the spring of 1918, it became evident that 
a special machine-gun would be required for use in 
tanks, the development of a Browning tank machine- 
gun was begun. This was the heavy Browning water- 
cooled gun with the water-jacket eliminated and an 
air-cooled barrel of heavy construction substituted; 
hand grips and sights were added and an ingenious 



3 o2 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

ball-and-socket method of mounting the gun in the 
armor of the tank was devised. The barrel of the 
Browning tank-gun is fixed in a solid ball of steel, 
which fits into a spherical socket in the wall of the 
tank in such a way that the gun can be rotated and 
aimed in any direction, the only opening through which 
an enemy bullet or fragment of shell might enter being 
the tiny aperture through which the gunner inside the 
tank aims his weapon. So mounted, the Browning 
machine-gun is as flexible and easy to handle as the 
ordinary infantry rifle, but with infinitely greater 
killing power because of the tremendous velocity of 
its continuous stream of bullets. 

While on the subject of guns, we must refer to two 
most ingenious devices developed for and by the navy. 
One of these, the Davis airplane-gun, proved the most 
successful effort yet made to adapt rifles larger in 
caliber than the ordinary infantry rifle to airplane use. 

The problem to be solved was that of abolishing 
the recoil. In the Browning, Lewis, and Marlin 
machine-guns the force of the recoil after each shot 
is expended in operating the mechanism that slips 
the next cartridge into the chamber and pulls the 
trigger. Thus all the jar of the explosion — the "kick" 
— is neutralized or absorbed. 

Guns of larger calibers have to be provided with 
elaborate and necessarily heavy mechanism for ab- 
sorbing the recoil, unfitting them for use in the air. 
Yet the 30-caliber machine-gun was not powerful 
enough or of sufficient range to make a seaplane 
effective against a submarine. The Davis gun solves 
the problem by literally shooting both ways at once! 

The device consists of two barrels, pointing in op- 
posite directions; the appearance is that of a long- 
barreled gun having an equally long rearward ex- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 303 

tension that goes back over the gunner's shoulder. 
One end of this end-to-end double-barreled gun is 
bored and rifled for the standard navy one-pound 
shell; the other end is smooth-bored and carries a 
charge of fine bird-shot of the same weight and with 




THE DAVIS GUN THAT SHOOTS BOTH WAYS 

At the same time that a one-pound shell is discharged toward a subma- 
rine a pound of bird - shot goes into the air over the gunner's shoulder, 
absorbing the recoil 

the same powder-charge behind it. When the trigger 
is pulled both cartridges are fired simultaneously. 
The recoil in each direction exactly counterbalances 
that in the other, the bird-shot falls harmlessly to the 
earth or the sea and there is no jar or strain on the 
structure of the seaplane. 

Another ingenious navy experiment in double- 



3 o4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

barreled weapons was the twin gun. This was two 
3 -inch navy rifles mounted parallel on a single mount. 
The purpose was to achieve rapidity of fire when at- 
tacking a submarine, but the device had only reached 
the experimental stage when the armistice was signed. 

American inventive genius manifested itself in many 
other types of arms. We improved the bayonet — a 
weapon which had become almost obsolete and much 
neglected by military authorities prior to the European 
War, but which came back into its own in the hand-to- 
hand fighting incident to the storming of the enemy's 
trenches. We devised a way of manufacturing bay- 
onets by rolling them out of steel instead of hand- 
forging them, as had been the universal practice. 

One application of Yankee ingenuity to small-arms 
evoked a protest from the German government, which 
declared that we were conducting warfare in an in- 
human and barbarous manner by using shot-guns in 
the trenches ! The Germans claimed that this was in 
violation of the Geneva Convention, which prohibited 
the use of weapons calculated to cause unnecessary 
pain and suffering. The main charge was true — we 
were using shot-guns. The efficacy of the sawed-off 
shot-gun or "riot-gun" had been demonstrated by 
many Western sheriffs. We supplied our troops with 
both Winchester and Remington repeating shot-guns 
with shortened barrels, primarily for the purpose of 
arming the guards placed over German prisoners, but 
many of them were actually used in the trenches. 
Each shell contained nine buckshot the size of a pea; 
for close fighting there is no firearm so deadly. 

How our manufacturers of arms speeded up the 
production of the Colt automatic pistol and the 
Smith & Wesson 4 5 -caliber revolvers, how new and 
ingenious methods were adopted to speed up produc- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 305 

tion of cartridges for rifles and machine-guns, are 
stories rivaling in interest in their recital of desperate 
efforts against unforeseen odds any story of actual 
fighting itself; I shall not stop to tell them here. 



— — 



BROWNING AUTOMATIC RIFLE 

This weapon, which fires twenty shots in five seconds, weighs fifteen pounds and 
can be handled by one man 

We had a new problem to solve in manufacturing 
tracer bullets and incendiary bullets for aerial warfare. 
In loading cartridge-belts for aircraft machine-guns a 
tracer bullet is substituted for the ordinary bullet, 
made of lead with a cupro-nickel jacket at stated 
intervals. The tracer bullet gives off a bright light 
as it passes through the air, a light so brilliant as to 
be plainly visible in the brightest sunlight. This 
enables the gunner to know at all times whether his 




WINCHE3T] 



I2-GAGE RIOT-GUN 



bullets are reaching their mark, as he can actually 
see the tracers, which may be every fifth bullet, for 
at least 500 yards of their flight. The tracer bullet, 
as developed in America, consists of a cupro-nickel 
shell, the nose of which contains a leaden core to 



306 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

balance the bullet properly. The rear chamber of the 
bullet holds a cup containing a mixture of barium 
peroxide and magnesium. The rear of the bullet is 
left open, so that the chemical mixture is ignited 
by the flame of the powder at the moment of discharge. 




THE LIVENS PROJECTOR 

One of the most carefully guarded war secrets, which the Germans were never able to 
solve, was this electrically fixed device for sending shells into the enemy lines. 



The purpose of the incendiary bullet in aerial war- 
fare is to set fire to the gas-tank of the enemy machine. 
In the incendiary bullet phosphorus is contained in a 
chamber in the nose of the bullet. Behind the 
phosphorus is a block of lead coming flush with the 
base of the bullet and soldered to it, and in one side 
of the bullet is a hole drilled through the hard casing 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 307 

and filled with a special kind of solder. The heat 
caused by the friction as the bullet passes through the 
gun-barrel melts the solder out of this hole and fuses 
the phosphorus in the nose of the bullet. The cen- 
trifugal force of the revolving bullet whirls the phos- 




"the weapon that won the war' 7 

The French Soixante-quinze, or 75-millimeter field-gun, was the most effective 

weapon the Allies had. This is the American thiee-inch gun, built on the French 

model with Yankee improvements. 

phoms out through the hole. The incendiary bullet 
gives off a spiral of blue smoke as it passes through 
the air, and at a range up to 350 yards such a bullet 
striking the gas-tank of an observation balloon or a 
Zeppelin, or any inflammable part of an airplane or 
its gas-tank, starts a conflagration. 

The armor-piercing bullet is not a solid chunk of 



3 o8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

steel ; such a missile might make a dent in thin armor- 
plate, but it would not penetrate it. As every one 
who has tried to drill a hole in steel realizes, a lubricant 
for the drill is necessary. In the case of the armor- 
piercing bullet this lubricant is melted lead. The 
outer casing of the armor-piercing rifle bullet is of 
cupro-nickel; this is lined with a thin coating of lead 
somewhat thicker at the ends. Inside of this is a 
sharp-pointed block or pin of hard steel. When the 
bullet is fired against armor plate the cupro-nickel 
jacket shatters into pieces, the lead melts under 
the heat of the impact and the steel block passes 
through the armor, lubricated by the molten lead! 

The conditions of trench warfare brought new 
problems in weapons to be solved by Yankee in- 
genuity. The hand-grenade, an ancient weapon long 
before discarded, the name of which lived only in the 
title of that handsome body of foot-soldiers, the 
British Grenadier Guards, came back into use in 
warfare in the early days of the trench fighting in 
Europe. At first the only grenades used were of the 
defensive or fragmentation type, consisting of a con- 
tainer made of stout metal that would fly into frag- 
ments when the interior charge exploded. Six other 
distinct types of grenades were developed during the 
war. America's own contribution was the offensive 
grenade made of paper ! 

The use of paper for the manufacture of missiles 
of warfare surely deserves to rank among the most 
ingenious of all products of Yankee ingenuity in the 
war. Instead of relying for its killing power upon 
fragmentation, like a shell, its deadly effect was pro- 
duced by the flame and concussion of the explosion 
itself. The fragmentation grenade, thrown by hand, 
could be safely used only from behind an embankment 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 309 

or from the trenches. When it exploded its fragments 
were as likely to fly back and kill the man who had 
thrown it as they were to kill the enemy, unless he 
were sheltered. The offensive grenade, made of 
paper, however, while it was sure to kill any man 
within three yards of the point where it exploded, 




FOUR TYPES OF HAND-GRENADES 

From left to right' Fragmentation hand-grenade; offensive hand-grenade made of 
paper; gas hand-grenade; phosphorus hand grenade. 



could be used in open surface warfare without danger 
to the troops using it. Before describing the paper 
grenade let me point out that the hand-grenade was a 
type of weapon to which American soldiers, with their 
practically universal experience in baseball, were much 
better adapted than the troops of any other country 
engaged in the war. 

The American offensive grenade is made of lami- 
nated paper spirally wound and waterproofed by being 
dipped in paraffin. The top of this body is a die 
casting into which the firing mechanism is fastened. 
By the time the armistice was signed these grenades 

21 



3io YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

were being produced at the rate of 60,000 a day, and 
more than 6,000,000 of them had been delivered to the 
government. 

The gas grenade, the phosphorus grenade, the com- 
bination hand and rifle grenade, the incendiary 
grenade, and the thermit grenade were the other de- 
velopments of this type of weapon; all of these were 
adapted from European experience in the earlier 
years of the war, America's problem with regard to 
them being mainly that of obtaining manufacturing 
facilities and production. 

One of the most closely guarded war secrets was 
that of the Livens projector, a device for throwing gas- 
bombs or drums into the enemy's ranks. Although 
used in the latter part of the war by British, French, 
and Americans, the Germans were never able to dis- 
cover the nature of this device or to produce anything 
similar to it. The secret was guarded most carefully. 
In the government office at Washington where the 
designs for its production were worked out and in the 
plants where it was made armed guards were always 
on the watch for suspicious characters, and no one 
was permitted to enter who was not personally known, 
not merely to be a good American but to be able to 
keep his mouth shut. The Livens projector consists 
of a long steel tube or barrel planted in the earth 
and braced against a pressed-steel base-plate. It has 
a range of about 1,500 yards — nearly a mile. In war- 
fare these projectors are usually fired in groups of 
twenty-five or multiples of twenty-five by electricity, 
so that the touching of a button or the throwing of a 
switch, perhaps several miles behind the front, would 
send a rain of gas-shells into the enemy's ranks. 

The use of the knife as a weapon of war was also a 
revival of ancient fighting methods forced upon the 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 311 

contending armies by the conditions of close hand-to- 
hand fighting. Every European army used trench 
knives of one type or another. The trench knife de- 
veloped for the use of American soldiers was a com- 
bination of the best points found in all the others. 
It is a vicious-looking little tool. It has a flat steel 




THE YANKEE TRENCH KNIFE 

The handle is of solid bronze, making it effective as "brass knuckles" if the nine- 
inch blade is broken off. 



blade nine inches long and a cast-bronze handle 
with four holes into which the user's fingers fit, the 
outer edge being provided with projections which 
make the hilt resemble the outlawed fighting device 
known as brass knuckles. At the butt of the hand 
piece is a sharp-pointed nut, serving both to hold 
the blade firmly in the guard and also to inflict serious 
damage in case the blade should be broken off. 

We cannot dismiss the subject of weapons without 
reference to the most important improvement in field 
artillery devised by Americans — the "split trail" for 
the 3 -inch or 7 5 -millimeter gun. This French weapon, 
conceded by all military men to be ultimate perfection 
in field artillery, had one defect which Yankee in- 
genuity remedied. It was so mounted that it could 
not be elevated, or pointed upward, sufficiently to be 




A TRIUMPH OF YANKEE INGENUITY 

This was the perfection of this short-range cannon — the 3 7 -millimeter gun for 

trench use. 




THE MOST IMPORTANT YANKEE IMPROVEMENT ON THE FRENCH 
"SEVENTY-FIVE" OR 3-INCH FIELD-GUN WAS THE "SPLIT TRAIL," PER- 
MITTING ITS ELEVATION TO FIRE AT AIRCRAFT 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 313 

used against low-flying aircraft, or to send a shell 
over a high near-by hill. American army engineers 
remedied this by dividing the "trail," the part of the 
gun-carriage that rests on the ground when the gun 
is in action and that is attached to the caisson when 
in motion, into two parts, hinged so they could be 
spread apart. This made a V-shaped opening that 
permitted the depression of the breech and the ele- 
vation of the muzzle, so that the gun could be fired 
almost directly upward. 

Still another Yankee contribution was the little 
37-millimeter (i^-inch) rifled gun or trench field- 
piece. This miniature cannon was being produced 
in large volume when hostilities ceased. Small and 
light enough to be carried easily by a corporal's guard, 
it was proving a most effective weapon at the front. 



XVII 

CAMOUFLAGE AND COUNTER-CAMOUFLAGE 

CAMOUFLAGE, a word taken from French theat- 
rical slang and meaning nothing more nor less 
than "make-up," came to designate in the Great War 
every sort of device for deceiving the enemy as to the 
true nature of ships, guns, munition-dumps, or other 
objects which it was desired to conceal. The use of 
camouflage by both sides was general before the United 
States became a belligerent. American ingenuity, 
however, made one of the most important contribu- 
tions to the art — it can hardly be called a science, al- 
though many of its scientific principles were ultimately 
developed — of camouflage. This Yankee contribu- 
tion was in the camouflaging of ships. 

One day in the spring of 1918 a photographer who 
had been doing some work for the United States gov- 
ernment was told to take his camera to a little island 
near the western end of Long Island Sound and photo- 
graph eight newly camouflaged ships which would go 
out to sea by that route that afternoon. The navy 
authorities wanted a pictorial record of the appear- 
ance of these craft in their new paint. The photog- 
rapher set forth in his motor-boat and took up his 
post at the island, a mile or so off the main ship 
channel. Late in the afternoon he caught his first 
glimpse of one of the camouflaged ships. He ran 



316 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

alongside in his motor-boat and made a photograph. 
Then he hailed the officer on the bridge. 

"Where are the others?" he asked. 

"Why, they all went through ahead of us!" was 
the reply. 

Seven ships had passea this experienced marine 
photographer at a distance of less than two miles 
and he had not seen one of them, so completely had 




THE LAST WORD IN MARINE CAMOUFLAGE 

This freakish-looking craft, painted by the " dazzle " system, eluded searchlights and 
keen-eyed coast-artillery men nearby. 



their camouflage deceived him. He had seen some- 
thing, but he had taken the craft he saw for a tow of 
barges, a Sound freighter, or some of the innumerable 
small motor-craft always present in the Sound ! 

The camouflage method that fooled the photog- 
rapher was the first result of the researches of the 
Submarine Defense Association, and their applica- 
tion. This association was formed in 191 7, with 
Lindon W. Bates, an American engineer, as its chair- 
man. A group of American artists, headed by Will- 
iam Andrew Mackay, Maximilian Toch, Gerome 
Brush, E. L. Warner, and Louis Herzog, had been 
working out camouflage methods, basing their work on 
their experience in the study of nature's colors and in 
painting pictures of natural objects. The purpose of 
the association was to systematize and standardize 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 317 



their work and to develop the best possible means of 
making our transports and cargo-ships invisible, or 
at least baffling to the Hun U-boats. Their efforts, 
combined with the effective system of naval convoy 
and the other measures taken against the submarine, 
were so successful that only one troop transport was 
sunk by a torpedo and less than twenty cargo-ships 
carrying supplies 
to our army 
through the sub- 
marine zone. 

At first the 
ship - camouflage 
problem ap- 
peared to be 
merely one of 
visibility. When 
the ships of the 
American navy 
were first paint- 
ed the color now 
everywhere 
known as "bat- 
tleship gray," at the time of the Spanish War, 
that was in a true sense camouflage, as this color 
provides what navy men term low visibility; a gray 
ship is much less easy to distinguish at a distance 
than one painted white or black. The experience 
of the British and French on land, however, had 
shown that the breaking up of any surface by a 
variety of colors made it much less easily seen than a 
solid surface of any color. Applied to ships, it w?s 
found that the observer looking through a periscope 
actually could not see a ship at a distance of three 
miles or more if it were painted in judiciously ar- 




A CAMOUFLAGED SHIP 

At a distance of two miles no one could tell what s>ort 
of a craft this was. 



3 i8 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

ranged blotches of sky-blue, white, brown, and black. 
He might see something, just as the photographer did, 
but the white would look like foamy wave-crests, the 




The ordinary cargo ship, uncamou- 
flaged, looks like this; a mere collection 
of angles. The hull is plain gray. 



The first step is to conceal the angles 
and give an effec: of angles elsewhere, 
by masses of dark blue. 




Patches of black destroy more of the 
visible angles and break up horizontal 
and vertical lines. 



A final application of white, in patches 
of sizes and shapes carefully worked 
out, reduces visibility to a minimum. 



SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF SHIP CAMOUFLAGING 



blue like patches of sky, the brown and reds and black 
might be seabirds or bits of wreckage or just the re- 
flection of the sun on the water. 

There is evidence that scores of ships painted by 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 319 



the low-visibility system of camouflage passed within 
three or four miles of lurking U-boats alert for their 
prey, without being discovered. But after some ships 
so camouflaged had been discovered and sunk by 
U-boats that happened to come up for a look at closer 
range, it became 
evident that low 
visibility alone was 
not sufficient pro- 
tection. Some 
way must be found 
to baffle the U-boat 
up to the very mo- 
ment of firing the 
torpedo. 

The Submarine 
Defense Associa- 
tion concentrated 
upon this problem. 
George Eastman 
personally became 
interested and 
placed the re- 
sources of the Kodak laboratories at the disposal 
of the association's engineers and artists, and Lloyd 
Jones, of the Kodak organization, invented a visi- 
bility meter which, used in connection with a 
portable periscope, made it possible to tell from 
the examination of a painted model ship just what 
combination of colors gave the most protection at 
a distance and what arrangements of stripes, zigzags, 
and blotches would make it most difficult for the 
U-boat commander to tell the size of the ship and 
whether it was moving east or west, even when 
seen at close range. 




WHAT THE U-BOAT CAPTAIN SAW 

A " periscope view " of a ship painted in the com- 
bined dazzle and low visibility system of camouflage 



3 2o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

As a result of hundreds of experiments there was 
evolved a method of camouflage known as the "daz- 
zle" system, the purpose being to make it impossible, 
even at close torpedo range, for an attacking U-boat 
to aim correctly at the target. Certain arrangements 




PAINTING THE CAMOUFLAGE ON THE MODEL BOAT 



of stripes, it was found, give the impression that a 
ship is larger or smaller than it really is, or that it is 
moving in one direction when it is actually moving 
the other way; the principles of physics and optics 
involved are too complicated to explain here, but they 
are the same that lie back of many popular illusions, 
such as arrangements of diagonal lines in a design 
that appears to be curved when it is really straight, 
or in patterns of equal length that appear different in 
size. Something of the same principle that makes the 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 321 

wheel of an automobile seen m a motion picture ap- 
pear to turn backward at times is also involved. 

A ship protected by the dazzle system offers the 
most baffling sort of target to the man behind the 
periscope. He is just as likely to aim his torpedo 




A GROUP OF CAMOUFLAGED BOATS READY FOR SERVICE" 

These are models of the large transports and ships which carried our troops and 
supplies to France. 



astern of the ship, under the impression that he is 
sending it to intercept her, as not. He may aim at 
the engine-room, or what he thinks is the engine- 
room, and merely puncture the forward hold; more 
often he will miss the ship entirely, so confusing are 
the different "dazzle" methods adopted. The dazzle 
system is the reverse of the low- visibility system, as 
its full effect cannot be gained without the greatest 
possible visbility. And since it is, of course, most 



322 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

desirable that the ship should not be seen at all, the 
camouflage system finally adopted and applied to 
all American ships of every sort so long as the war 
lasted was a compromise between the two methods. 

America's contributions to the art of camouflage 
on land were mainly in the adoption and development 
of systems that had been tried out and found most 
useful by the French and the British. Every gun, 
every piece of equipment of any sort that was ex- 
pected to be used anywhere near the front, was camou- 
flaged in standardized patterns and colors before it 
left the factory in America. Yankee ingenuity found 
application in the devising of methods of putting on 
the camouflage with the utmost speed and efficiency. 
In the gun-carriage plant of the American Car and 
Foundry Company, for instance, I watched the girls in 
khaki overalls spraying the camouflage on the finished 
caissons and wheels one afternoon. The paints of dif- 
ferent colors, in huge tanks, were deposited by means 
of a gigantic reproduction of the air-brush, used by 
artists everywhere. A stencil pattern covered all of 
the caisson except that which was to be painted yel- 
low, for example; the camoufleuse wielded a hose as 
big as that of a vacuum cleaner, and in a few seconds 
all the exposed parts of the apparatus were covered 
with yellow. Then the blue, brown, and black were 
sprayed on by the same means. 

But even though our contributions to the camou- 
flaging of guns were only in the line of quantity pro- 
duction, Yankee ingenuity did contribute, and very 
importantly, to means of counteracting the effect of 
the enemy's camouflage; for the Germans early in the 
war became themselves extremely adept in methods 
of concealing their gun emplacements and other facts 
which they wanted to hide. As I have already 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 323 

pointed out, the most important function of the air- 
plane in war is to spy out the enemy's positions, and 
particularly to locate his guns. When aerial defense 
had been perfected by the Germans to the point 
where no airman could fly low enough or slow enough 
to see their gun positions with the naked eye, resort 




THE BOAT AS SIGHTED THROUGH A PERISCOPE 

The lenses are adjusted to make the "vessel" appear two miles distant; this test 
is made to make sure that the camouflage is perfect. 



was had to photography; eventually the German 
camouflage baffled even the camera lens, in many 
instances. The problem that had to be solved, then, 
was to find a method of locating enemy guns that did 
not depend upon actual observation of the gun itself. 
This problem was so important that it justified any 
possible expenditure in money and lives for its solu- 
tion, for the most important essential in war is to 
discover and destroy the enemy's artillery. The so- 
lution was found in a system of electric listening and 
sound-recording devices that made it possible to 
locate a gun with the utmost precision by comparing 



3 2 4 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the time between the three distinct sounds that 
followed its discharge. This was done by placing 
microphone receiving stations at various known and 
recorded points within the zone of shell-fire, connect- 
ing them by wires with central recording stations and 
by means of triangulation finding out exactly where 
the gun that fired a given shot fired it from. A 
system of sound-ranging was in use by the British 
and French before 191 7. This method was based 
upon the fact that there are three distinct sounds 
heard at what might be termed the "receiving end" 
of artillery fire. 

The first sound is that of the shell itself passing 
overhead, since the projectile fired by a high-power 
rifled cannon travels faster than the speed of sound, 
which is normally 1,086 feet a second, varying, how- 
ever, with wind velocity and direction and the temper- 
ature and density of the air. The next sound recorded 
is the "boom" of the gun, and then comes the sound 
of the exploding shell. As each of these three sounds 
was reported to the central station by different mi- 
crophones, the exact location of each of which was 
known, the distances between the receiving stations 
formed a base line on a map, the time between the 
different reports furnishing a clue to the distance of 
the gun and the velocity of the shell, and a compli- 
cated system of calculations "placed" the gun at a 
point on the map to which artillery fire was then 
directed. It was a crude and imperfect method, but 
by means of it sixty-three German guns were dis- 
covered in a single day, and destroyed aerial photo- 
graphs of their positions showed them so close on the 
map to the points determined by sound-ranging that 
a single pin-prick covered the results of both ob- 
servations ! 






YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 325 



Immediately upon the entrance of America into 
the war our scientists of the Bureau of Standards 
were put to work to devise an improved, more ac- 
curate, less delicate, and complicated method of lo- 
cating enemy guns by sound. They began by elimi- 
nating two of the 
three sounds used 
in the earlier 
method, and 
worked out a plan 
that required only 
a record of the 
sound of the gun's 
discharge and the 
exact fractional 
part of a second 
of time when it 
was received at 
each of a number 
of microphone 
stations. So 
thoroughly was 
this done that in 
the last few 
months of the 

war, according to an official statement by the Assist- 
ant Secretary of War, more German guns were located 
by this means than by any other. In one day a single 
American sound-ranging instrument, with its attached 
microphones, spotted 117 German gun positions. 

The American sound-ranging device consists of a 

central station located several miles behind the lines 

and six microphones which are placed at intervals of 

about a mile along the front, usually in a trench. 

When the armistice was signed the American forces 
22 



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1 fek-" ' 


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fe_i (fJt^^^^^u 


r^KJL^ 


^v^*S"i 


B 3 



THE AIRPLANE-DETECTOR 

A Yankee soldier showing some French youngsters how 
it warns of the approach of a hostile 'plane at night. 



326 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

had twelve sets of sound-ranging apparatus in opera- 
tion, covering a sixty-mile front. These microphones 
required for their construction a degree of electrical 
and mechanical skill seldom applied to anything 
but laboratory instruments. They had to be so 
delicately adjusted that they would pick up only a 
certain type of sound and at the same time so rugged 
that they would withstand the jar and shock of 
continuous bombardment. 

As each microphone picked up the sound of a gun 
behind the enemy's lines the impulse was transmitted 
to the central station, where a strip of photo-sensitive 
paper tape was slowly unwinding behind an electro- 
magnetic needle. The impulse from the microphone 
moved the needle, the path of which along the tape 
was marked by a continuous line, broken only when 
the impulse was received. For each microphone a 
separate parallel line was made on the moving tape, 
which was itself calibrated to fifths of a second, so 
that the exact time of the reception of the impulse 
from each of the six microphones was automatically 
recorded. To triangulate from the six known posi- 
tions and so locate the gun whose explosion had set up 
each of the six impulses was a very simple matter. 
In the last month of the war the Bureau of Standards 
still further improved this light and portable appa- 
ratus by substituting for the photographic tape a strip 
smoked by an acetylene flame; the needle traced a 
white line as it scraped through the smoked surface. 

The application of the microphone to the location of 
guns was a development of its earliest use in the Great 
War, for detecting subterranean mining operations 
by the enemy. For this purpose it was first used 
by the French. Inclosed in a box and placed in an 
underground gallery or on a solid rock, it gave warn- 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 327 

ing of any disturbance of the earth within seventy- 
five yards or so. American scientists developed a 
geophone with a much greater range, and devised the 
method of connecting a number of them with a central 
station. These devices, hidden under trash or earth 
in No Man's Land, not only recorded any subter- 
ranean activities of the enemy, but at night picked up 
the vibrations caused by the footsteps of enemy 
raiding-parties and even conversations carried on in 
low tones, exactly as the dictagraph does. 

When hostilities ceased Yankee engineers and 
scientists had developed a device even more marvelous 
than any of these — a shell-detector which by picking 
up the vibrations transmitted through the earth when 
an enemy gun was fired gave warning in time to enable 
troops within range to get under cover. This could 
be used only where the exact position and range of 
the gun were known, but frequently the American 
forces knew the exact location of some hundreds of 
enemy guns, detected by sound-ranging; the practice 
was to wait until the hour of attack before silencing 
the guns so detected, and then concentrating artillery 
fire on all of them at once as the troops moved for- 
ward. So the usefulness of an instrument that would 
tell when a shell from one of these guns was coming 
toward our positions is obvious. The physical fact 
that earth vibrations travel many times as fast as air 
vibrations is the basis of this apparatus. The ex- 
periments that had been concluded just as the war 
ended showed that at a range of 4.1 miles this mecha- 
nism gave warning of the approaching shell nineteen 
seconds before it was due to arrive, thus giving ample 
time for every one to get under cover. 

Another application of the principle of sound- 
ranging, developed by our army with the co-operation 



328 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

of scientists, was the apparatus developed for detect- 
ing and locating hostile airplanes at night. The 
principle here was the same as in the submarine-de- 
tector, which I have described elsewhere. Four great 
horns are mounted on a standard in such a way that 
they can be turned in any direction. One pair is used 
to determine the particular point of the compass from 
which comes the sound of the propeller and engine of 
a hostile bombing-'plane, which can be heard from one 
to three miles away ; the other pair is used to discover 
the altitude of the 'plane, by fixing the angle from the 
horizon at which the sound is heard. When these two 
directions have been ascertained, the work of but a 
second or two, the searchlights can pick out the raider 
with no difficulty and convert him into a perfect 
target for anti-aircraft guns or our own fighting- 
'planes. In operation the listener moves the horns 
horizontally, "in azimuth" as this movement is 
termed, until the sound received in his ear-pieces 
through the tubes attached to each horn is of exactly 
the same intensity in both ears. Then the other horns 
are swung vertically until they reach an elevation at 
which the sound in both ears is the same. A simple 
scale indicates both angles and the instrument is 
precise enough to locate a 'plane within one degree of 
arc. 

The French invented an improvement on this 
method, using a device called a parabloid sound- 
reflector, which was portable, while the horn device 
was cumbersome to carry about. The parabloid is a 
hemispherical basin, built of wood curved into a true 
parabola. Just as a searchlight or an automobile 
headlight, by means of its parabolic mirror, gathers 
the light rays from the lamp and projects them in 
parallel lines, so the parabloid sound-reflector gathers 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 329 

sound waves from a single direction only and reflects 
them to a point in the focal center of the parabolic 
curve. At this point a microphone picks up the 
sound. Since the only sound waves thus gathered 
are those that must come from a point lying exactly 




THE PARABLOID AS PERFECTED BY AMERICAN INGENUITY 

This device gives the location of a hostile airplane at night. All sounds are reflected 
from every part of the curved surface to the microphone receiver set at the focus of 
the parabola; by turning the apparatus from side to side and up and down until 
the sound registers at its greatest intensity the direction and angle of height of the 
approaching 'plane are discovered. 



in line with the axis of the parabloid, the moment 
they are heard the azimuth and elevation of the 'plane 
making the sound are known and indicated. While 
not so accurate as the quadruple horn method, this 
device had the advantage of portability. American 
engineers, however, improved the French parabloid 
by reducing the weight from 3,000 to 1,300 pounds, 
reducing the cost 60 per cent, and so constructing it 
that it could be set up in one-sixth the time required 
for the French machine. 



330 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

i 

At first glance there does not seem to be any in- 
dustrial or commercial salvage from the devices and 
methods which I have just described. It is not im- 
probable, however, that the experiences of our scien- 
tists and manufacturers in devising and making sound- 
recording instruments of a delicacy and durability 
never before achieved, and in figuring out new and 
ingenious applications of the principles of the science 
of acoustics, may be turned to account in such de- 
cidedly useful and peaceful arts as bridge-building. 
Engineers have never agreed on a satisfactory method 
of measuring the stresses and strains of bridge struct- 
ures, in which may be included the steel skeletons 
of tall buildings and the steel frames of ships. The 
effort has always been to provide a ' ' factor of safety ' ' 
sufficient to take care of all wind strains and possible 
overload, which has doubtless in innumerable in- 
stances led to the use of much more material than was 
necessary, with consequent unnecessary expense; 
while, on the other hand, even the most careful calcu- 
lations go astray at times, as the disastrous wreck of 
the great Quebec bridge across the St. Lawrence River 
proves. 

The armistice had hardly been signed before the 
technicians of the Bureau of Standards, whose chief 
function is that of testing materials and mechanisms 
of all kinds, were at work on plans for the application 
of the microphone and sound-recording devices to 
the testing of bridges, to ascertain by the sounds and 
vibrations under varying loads and different condi- 
tions of temperature just where and in what degree 
such structures are affected — in other words, where 
the strains come and how great they are. Out of this 
may well be evolved principles that will govern steel 
construction of the future. 



XVIII 

DOLLAR-SAVING DISCOVERIES AND DEVICES 

THE principal difference between the operations 
of a government, whether in war or in peace, 
and the operations of a private business enterprise, 
is not one of size or the extent of the operations of 
either ; many national governments spend less money 
annually, deal with a much smaller area of the earth's 
surface, and affect the destinies of fewer persons than 
any one of a dozen big American business corpora- 
tions. The essential difference is solely that govern- 
ment operates, in theory at least, to get things done 
well, efficiently, promptly, and to the best advantage 
of the greatest number of people, while these pur- 
poses are only incidental to the operation of a private 
business, the sole test of which, as to its success or 
failure, is whether or not it makes money for its 
owners. If it can make more money by doing things 
well, efficiently, promptly, and to the advantage of 
the greatest number of people — as many big corpora- 
tions, and small concerns as well, have found to be the 
case — well and good ; these things are not the reasons 
for which the business is conducted, however. 

Most of the criticisms of governmental operations 
arise from the failure to recognize the essential dif- 
ference between them and ordinary business opera- 
tions. Government bureaus are criticized because 
they are not self-supporting, whereas there is no 



332 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

obligation for them to be self-supporting; heads of 
government bureaus, fearing this sort of criticism or 
failing to recognize the fallacy of the premises upon 
which it is based, try to make their bureaus self- 
supporting and fail to do the things which they have 
been intrusted with doing in the way they should be 
done. From many experiences of this sort has arisen 
the prevailing impression that whatever the govern- 
ment does is done badly and extravagantly and that 
this inefficiency and extravagance are inherent in 
governmental operations. There are many thousands 
of business men in America to-day, however, whose 
experiences in dealing with the government during 
the war have given them a new impression of govern- 
mental methods and purposes, and who are applying 
in their private business principles and processes 
worked out by scientists under governmental direc- 
tion, applied to war production by governmental 
authority, which no private enterprise ever before 
had the initiative to discover or the vision to adopt 
until they were forced upon them. 

One subject in which the educational value of 
methods devised by and for the government during 
the war can hardly be overestimated is the common- 
place one of packing goods for shipment. 

For half a century or more America has been export- 
ing locomotives and railway cars to the four corners 
of the earth, and throughout that period these com- 
modities have been shipped "knocked down," each 
part or a number of parts being packed in a wooden 
packing-case. American engineers built 937 miles of 
standard-gage track in France and laid down several 
times as many miles of narrow gage, to connect the 
ports of St.-Nazaire, Brest, and Bordeaux with the 
A. E. F.'s supply-depots and all with the front. We 



334 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

had to ship locomotives and cars in great numbers, 
and they were sent at first in the old-fashioned way, a 
locomotive in nineteen packages and a freight-car in 
twenty-six different boxes and bundles. As early as 
October, 191 7, General Atterbury pointed out the 
economies in time, money, and man-power that would 
accrue if locomotives could be shipped to France ' ' all 
standing," ready to take out of the ship's hold and 
put on the rails. The manufacturers of locomotives 
ridiculed the suggestion; so, too, did the officials 
charged with the shipment of freight for the A. E. F. 
War Department officials, however, became con- 
vinced that the project was feasible; the question was 
where to get ships that could carry complete loco- 
motives. The huge car ferries that ply between 
Key West and Havana, and across the St. Lawrence 
at Quebec, might do it, but they were unavailable, 
and there was a question whether they could carry 
deck-loads of locomotives across the Atlantic in 
stormy weather. The big ore and grain ships of the 
Great Lakes had hatchways big enough to admit a 
locomotive to the hold, but to get these vessels to the 
ocean involved tremendous expense and delay; only 
the smaller Lake ships could by any means be made 
available for ocean service. The most careful search 
for suitable ships finally turned up four such craft, 
the Feltore, Firmore, Cubore, and Santore, built by a 
steel company for bringing iron ore from its Cuban 
mines, and provided with the huge hatches necessary 
for the use of modern unloading machines. On May 
18, 1 91 8, the Feltore sailed for France with thirty- 
three locomotives in its hold, on their own wheels, 
carefully packed in with baled hay. How successful 
was the venture is told in General Pershing's cable, 
which I quote: 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 335 

Shipment of erected locomotives transmitted on the Feltore 
very satisfactory. Boat completely discharged of locomotives 
and cargo in 13 days, with saving of fifteen ship's days in unloading 
the S3 locomotives erected, as compared with same number of 
locomotives not erected and further saving of 14 days of erecting 
forces. Observations of Captain Byron, who came with these 
locomotives, show that by loading locomotives in double tiers, 
placing cab parts and tools, now in separate packages, within ten- 
der space and fire boxes, 40 to 45 locomotives can be loaded. 




UNLOADING LOCOMOTIVES ALL READY TO RUN 

For the first time, we shipped Baldwin "Moguls" across the Atlantic on their own 

wheels. Note the huge hatches of the Firmore, the ship that took thirty-six of 

them in this shipment. 

Five hundred and thirty-three locomotives were 
shipped in this manner. In addition to the immense 
saving of time, there was a money saving of $775 per 
locomotive that would have been spent for ' ' knocking 
down" and packing, and of $800 each, the former cost 
of erecting them on the other side. 

While Lake steamers big enough to admit locomo- 
tives could not be brought to the seaboard, many of 
the smaller type of Lake ships were loaded at Lake 
ports and sent directly through to France with car- 
goes. The narrow-gage railroad tracks used in the 
combat areas close to the front-line trenches were 



336 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

manufactured at Cleveland. They consisted of steel 
rails bolted to steel cross-ties, making short sections 
of track all ready to lay down. These were loaded on 
ships at the Cleveland piers and sent through the 
Welland Canal and across to France. For many 
years direct freight service from Lake ports to Europe 
has been a dream of shipping men ; its realization as a 
measure of war economy brings it nearer as a commer- 
cial possibility. 

Locomotives were more economically shipped all 
standing than knocked down ; airplanes, on the other 
hand, must be boxed. The first airplanes we shipped 
overseas occupied immense areas of valuable cargo 
space. A number of officers detailed to work out 
more economical methods of packing airplanes spent 
weeks in experiments, with the result that a standard 
package for knocked-down airplanes was evolved, 
which saved, at the lowest estimate, more than 
$13,000,000 in tonnage space that otherwise would not 
have been available for other cargo. 

In solving this problem and many others relating 
to the packing and shipment of war-supplies the army 
availed itself of one of the most efficient and least 
known of the government's scientific bureaus, the 
Forest Products Laboratory of the United States 
Forest Service. I have referred to the part this in- 
stitution played in the production of aircraft, through 
the development of the Tiemann dry kiln and its 
tests of glue and of airplane woods and parts. The 
350 scientific experts of the Forest Products Labora- 
tory are concerned with every use of wood, and the 
study of packing-boxes was not the least important 
phase of their work. When the need for the safe 
shipment of millions of tons of munitions and supplies 
to France became the most pressing problem for the 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 337 

army to solve, the Forest Products Laboratory was 
called in, and specifications prepared by its staff were 
adopted by the army General Staff for the entire War 
Department, for all packing of shipments. 

Tackling the problem with a background of thor- 
ough scientific knowledge of every kind of wood, its 




UNLOADING CRATED AIRPLANES IN FRANCE 

More than $13,000,000 in cargo space was saved by packing 'planes in boxes. 



qualities, its availability, and the best uses to which 
it can be put, the Forest Service added the results of its 
tests of packing-boxes, made by means of an in- 
genious six-sided revolving-cage, or "tumbler," which 
subjects any package in a few minutes to all the 
bumps, knocks, and strains to which it would be sub- 
jected in many thousands of miles of travel by rail 
and water and the most careless handling by railroad 
freight men and stevedores. 



338 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

More than twenty types of packing-boxes were 
re-designed for the army by the Forest Service. The 
boxes permitted under these specifications were 
cheaper, to begin with; where the old army specifi- 
cations had called for clear white pine, for example, 
the new permitted the use of many cheaper woods. 
Fewer nails in some types of boxes, more nails in 
others, screws for some classes of shipments instead 
of nails, wire or metal straps for others, all were de- 
termined by scientific tests. Not only were the re- 
designed boxes savers of cargo space, but the exces- 
sively high percentage of broken packages reaching 
France was immediately reduced, the figures after 
July i, 191 8, showing damaged boxes amounting to 
only 1 5 per cent, of the former proportionate number. 

Millions of boxes were shipped to France containing 
ordnance equipment of different sorts; by using any 
of thirty different species of wood instead of white 
pine, and using also thinner material, cargo space of 
inestimable value was saved. Grenade boxes were 
redesigned to save space. A box originally designed 
to carry 30 one-pound cans of saddle soap was 
redesigned with a saving of 43 per cent, of the space 
formerly occupied. The boxes carrying 140 pounds 
each of cannon powder were reshaped so as to save 
14 per cent, of space. A box designed to carry two 
Browning automatic rifles with equipment was re- 
designed, with a saving of 28 per cent, both in cargo 
space and in material. In the boxes in which the 
infantry rifles were shipped, ten in a case, there was a 
saving, through redesigning, of 33 per cent, of space. 
More than two cubic feet were saved in the space 
occupied by each harness box. 

If their war contracts had done nothing more than 
to direct the attention of manufacturers and business 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 339 

men all over the country to the commercial value of 
the scientific researches of the Forest Products Lab- 




TESTING PACKING-BOXES 

By the use of this machine the Forest Service saved the government millions in 
cargo space and in damage to munitions in transit. 



oratory it would still be possible to contend that 
something of real importance and peace-time useful- 
ness had been learned. Many thousands, however, 



34 o YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

came for the first time into contact with another of the 
government's scientific departments, the Bureau of 
Standards of the Department of Commerce, whose 
function is primarily to make tests of materials and 
machines. Here, too, lessons of lasting value were 
learned. 

More than two hundred military and naval prob- 
lems were put up to the Bureau of Standards for 
solution. All were solved and almost all of the 
solutions have definite industrial and commercial 
applicability. For example, we were woefully short of 
infantry rifles when the United States entered the war. 
American manufacturers had taken contracts for the 
manufacture of large numbers of rifles for the British 
and Russian governments, and had installed and 
equipped expensive plants for their manufacture. It 
had taken them many months longer than they had 
anticipated to begin production, and some of them 
were still away behind on their foreign contracts when 
America's demand for weapons was added to that 
which they were already attempting to supply. One 
of the largest companies, in fact, had actually paid to 
the British government a $5,000,000 penalty for 
failure to deliver rifles on the dates called for in its 
contract. 

The United States had to rely on these same manu- 
facturers for the equipment of its army. It was ob- 
vious that the manufacture of rifles involved some 
difficulty which was not easily overcome; when the 
problem was analyzed it was found that the chief delay 
was due to the absence of any method of determining 
in advance the quality of the steel of which the rifle- 
barrels were made. A single bar the size of a rifle- 
barrel might be hard in some parts and soft in others ; 
this lack of uniformity caused the drill used for boring 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 341 

out the hole through the center of the bar to diverge. 
The drill would hit a hidden hard spot and be thrown 
out of its true course, with complete loss of all the 
time and labor spent on the barrel to that point. 




A FIVE-TON MOTOR-TRUCK KNOCKED DOWN FOR SHIPMENT TO FRANCE 
IN A SINGLE BOX 



"Is there any way," the War Department asked the 
Bureau of Standards, "to find out if a piece of steel 
is of uniform texture and hardness without drilling 
into it?" 

There wasn't any way then available, but the bureau 
found a way. The magnetic properties of steel vary 

23 



342 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

with the hardness or softness of the metal. A device 
was constructed, composed of electric coils, through 
which the magnetized un drilled rifle-barrel is passed. 
The exact degree of magnetization of each successive 
inch of the rod was thus determined, and if it were 
unequal or irregular the rod was thrown out and no 
time wasted in trying to make it into a rifle-barrel. 

Industry had long been looking for a method of 
determining quickly and cheaply the presence or ab- 
sence of hidden flaws in steel rails. In railway prac- 
tice alone the process devised by the Bureau of Stand- 
ards is of immense value, since flaws in the rails are 
the cause of a majority of all railway accidents. In 
steel construction of all kinds, the possibility of de- 
tecting flaws with certainty is of the greatest utility. 

One of the most important and ingenious contri- 
butions to the art of war by the Bureau of Standards 
did not get an opportunity for use under actual war 
conditions; it was one of the long list of Yankee in- 
ventions and devices which would have helped in the 
complete annihilation of the Hun had the Germans not 
quit when they did. This is an electrical method of 
machine-gun control for firing "through the pro- 
peller" of an airplane. I have described in a previous 
chapter the hydraulic device with which our military 
'planes were equipped, by which a fixed machine-gun 
under the control of the pilot is fired at intervals corre- 
sponding with the propeller revolutions, the bullets 
passing between the blades of the propeller itself. 
The best of these devices was not always accurate; 
a small amount of wear, unless immediately com- 
pensated for by new adjustments, made the gun fire 
at the wrong time, and in numerous instances the 
propeller itself was punctured or shot away. 

Just before the armistice was signed the Bureau of 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 343 

Standards had perfected a device which substitutes 
electric control for any sort of mechanical control. 
An electric magnet on the side of the gun holds the 
hammer back, after the gun has been automatically 
recocked by the recoil of the previous shot, until the 
instant when the space in front of the gun is clear 
of both propeller blades. The electric connection 
with the propeller axis is positive; the circuit actuat- 
ing the magnet which holds the hammer back cannot 
be broken until the propellers are in a safe position. 
This electric control, moreover, has another ad- 
vantage over the mechanical methods previously in 
use in that the pilot does not have to press a trigger 
with his hand or his foot, but merely to touch an 
electric button, which starts the gun firing; this but- 
ton or any other means of making an electric contact 
can be placed anywhere in the cockpit. 

This made it possible to construct a rubber mouth- 
piece which the pilot can hold between his teeth 
and containing a simple device for making and break- 
ing the electric gun-control circuit. With both hands 
busy, he can fire his machine-gun by merely pressing 
his teeth together! 

The largest single job given to the Bureau of 
Standards was that of making master gages for the 
calibration of every part of every item in the whole 
vast munitions program. Until 191 8 Sweden had a 
monopoly of high-grade gages for precision work. 
The gages made under the direction of the Bureau of 
Standards excel the best ever produced abroad in 
both precision and quality of workmanship ; many of 
them are accurate to within one-millionth of an inch. 



XIX 

MEDICAL AND SURGICAL ACHIEVEMENTS 

WHEN the history of the Great War comes to be 
written from the perspective of twenty years 
hence the conscientious historian will point to the 
marvelous advances in preventive medicine, in cura- 
tive medicine, in surgical principles and technic, in 
sanitation, and in personal hygiene as perhaps the 
most important group of scientific achievements 
brought about by the war and the pressure of military 
necessity. In point of lasting and cumulative bene- 
fits to the people of the whole world the new knowledge 
acquired of means for the prevention and cure of 
disease and the healing of injuries, together with the 
application on the largest scale in history of the ac- 
cumulated scientific knowledge of the whole subject 
of individual and community health, may well rank 
first, whether it be measured in terms of dollars and 
cents or in terms of personal happiness, in its collective 
value to mankind. 

Whether the discovery of new medical and surgical 
measures and the instruction of twenty thousand and 
more young physicians in their use is of greater im- 
portance than the training of more than three million 
young men in the care of their own bodies and the 
elementary principles of community sanitation is too 
fine a point to be decided. The physicians who have 
served in the Medical Corps of the army and navy 




ROENTGENOGRAPHS OR X-RAY NEGATIVES OF INJURED BONES 



346 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

and the men who have been subjected to their in- 
tensive hygiene training have come back into civil 
life as missionaries of health; their experience and 
new-found knowledge will prove the greatest possible 
stimulus to the introduction of wise measures for the 
general elevation of the health of all the people, and 
will make for a higher average of good health in the 
coming generation. 

Nothing could better illustrate the progress that 
has been made in the science of preventive medicine 
since the Civil War than to contrast the proportion 
of deaths from disease and those from injuries in 
battle in that war and in the Great War just ended. 
In the Civil War 97,000 Northern soldiers were killed 
or died of wounds, while 184,000 died of disease. The 
casualty list of the War Department to June 1, 1919, 
showed that in the war 44,763 American soldiers were 
killed or died of wounds, and only 19,887 died of 
disease! Compared with the mortality among men 
of the same average ages in civil life, there was a 
slightly larger proportion of deaths from disease in the 
army. This was due entirely to the transmission of 
the highly communicable diseases, measles, scarlet 
fever, meningitis, and pneumonia. These took their 
heaviest toll among soldiers from rural districts who 
had never been exposed to these infections, and their 
prevalence was the natural result of bringing them 
into close contact with men from every section of the 
country. With the exception of the four classes of 
infection named, there was a smaller proportion of 
deaths from disease in the army than in the same 
number of men of the same age in civil life. 

Typhoid, the scourge of all former wars, was almost 
totally absent. This disease, which killed thousands 
in the Spanish War, is so completely guarded against 





IN AN AMERICAN ARMY BASE HOSPITAL 

Every device that Yankee ingenuity could devise for the comfort as will as the 
rapid recovery of wounded men was adopted; these mechanical aids to convales- 
cence were a constant source of amazement to foreign observers. 



348 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

that it now barely figures in army health reports. And 
before the United States had been in the war a year 
there had been developed a vaccine or serum against 
pneumonia which holds every promise of accomplish- 
ing in the prevention of this disease what the anti- 
typhoid vaccine has done in its field. 

It is to the researches of the scientific staff of the 
Rockfeller Institute for Medical Research that this 
new prophylactic is due, as well as many of the other 
remarkable medical and surgical discoveries made 
during the war. Ten weeks before the Seventy- 
seventh Division was sent overseas from Camp Upton 
about half the men were inoculated with this new 
serum. Not a single case of pneumonia developed 
among the men so inoculated, while among those not 
inoculated the prevalence of the disease was greater 
than before. The extension of this method of pre- 
venting pneumonia to civilians as well as to the rest 
of the army is only a matter of obtaining a sufficient 
supply of serum. Eventually it will be as readily 
obtainable everywhere as is the diphtheria antitoxin. 
Serums which have proved effective against menin- 
gitis, dysentery, and gas gangrene were also de- 
veloped by the Rockefeller Institute for the United 
States army. 

One of the most important of all medical dis- 
coveries due to the war is the identification of the 
"cootie," or body louse, as a carrier of disease, and 
the development of means of combating his activities. 
To the "cootie" have been traced the germs of 
typhus and of several other diseases. Typhus from 
time immemorial has been the scourge of armies the 
world over. It is indeed known in some parts of the 
world as "army fever." In some countries it is called 
"prison fever." Wherever there are people living in 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 349 

crowded quarters, with more or less physical contact 
and under unclean and unsanitary conditions, typhus 
is a certain menace. It broke out in Serbia among 
the non-combatant population early in the war, and 
tens of thousands of Serbians died from it. Many 




A FIELD OPERATING-ROOM 



members of the American ' ' typhus commission ' ' sent 
to Serbia by the Red Cross also caught the fever and 
died. At that time it was only suspected that the 
body louse might be the principal carrier of this 
"spotted fever." Now the guilt has been definitely 
placed and another of the world's chief causes of 
misery and death has come under the control of man. 
Far more spectacular than these and many other 
important advances in medicine are the achievements 
in surgery whereby it is now possible to bring back 
wounded men from the very brink of the grave ; to 
heal and restore to usefulness men who, similarly 
injured in any previous war, would inevitably have 



350 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

perished; to save limbs that formerly would have 
been amputated; to patch up and rebuild maimed 
and shattered bodies and features into marvelous 
semblances of their former selves, and to enable the 
man who has lost arms or legs to become a skilful, 
competent workman in spite of his dismemberment. 
Surgery cannot yet restore sight to the blind nor hear- 
ing to those whose ear-drums have been broken by 
the concussion of great guns, but short of these there 
is hardly a miracle imaginable that cannot to-day be 
performed upon the unfortunate victims of war. 
While the value to a world at peace of the prevention 
and cure of disease is naturally greater than the value 
of even the most marvelous possibilities of recon- 
structive surgery, these latter are, nevertheless, a 
distinct added asset to the world's wealth, in view of 
the wide variety of industrial and other accidents 
which may call them into play. 

Perhaps America's most important surgical con- 
tribution to the world's heritage of health from the 
war is the discovery of a new and more positive and 
powerful antiseptic than was known before and of a 
scientifically exact method of applying it, so that, 
provided the prescribed technic is properly carried out, 
it cannot fail to heal even the most seriously infected 
wounds. Much has been said about the Carrel- 
Dakin method of treating infected and other wounds. 
How marvelous it actually is in the precision with 
which it achieves its end is not generally understood. 
It reduces the most difficult of all surgical problems 
to the same mathematical precision with which the 
simplest operation is performed. 

The Carrel-Dakin treatment is another production 
of the Rockefeller Institute's research, having been 
devised by Drs. Charles Dakin and Alexis Carrel, 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 351 

two of the most distinguished members of the insti- 
tute's staff. To Doctor Dakin belongs the credit of 
discovering a new antiseptic, hypochlorite of sodium. 
Chlorin, the same deadly gas that, as I have pointed 
out in a previous 
chapter, gives the 
killing power to 
phosgen, mus- 
tard gas, and the 
rest of the deadly 
array of war chem- 
icals, is the germ- 
killing basis of 
this new antisep- 
tic. To combine 
it with other ele- 
ments in a propor- 
tion that would 
prevent it from 
injuring raw 
tissues, while per- 
mitting it still to 
exercise all of its 
powerful germi- 
cidal effect, was 
the problem 
Doctor Dakin 
solved. Doctor 
Carrel, the Ameri- 
canized French- 
man whose surgical technic is the marvel of the 
medical world, the man who has performed and de- 
vised methods of performing more new and radical 
operations than any other surgeon of modern times, 
worked out the system of the application of the 




PORTABLE ELECTRO-MAGNET 

Used in extracting steel particles from the eye and to 
aid in locating them under the skin. 



352 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

Dakin solution to the deepest and most inaccessible 
wounds, and reduced his method to such an exact 
mathematical formula that any surgeon, once skilled 
in the method, can operate it with perfect results. 

The underlying principle of the Carrel-Dakin 
method of wound treatment is that nature will heal 
any injury if given a free chance. First the wound 
must be cleaned out with the knife, every particle of 
infected tissue cut away, no matter how deep the 
operator has to go. Then the Dakin fluid is applied, 
by means of an irrigating device invented by Doctor 
Carrel, which leads the fluid through a number of tiny 
hollow rubber "fingers" into every farthest recess of 
the wound. The exact number of "fingers" to be 
used and the exact amount of fluid to be applied are 
carefully calculated in advance proportionate to the 
area of exposed surface. The application is precisely 
timed as to duration and frequency; the temperature 
of the wound, taken by a thermometer inserted under 
the dressings, is the gage that determines whether the 
instructions have been followed. Given a wound of a 
certain depth and extent, if the prescribed method be 
followed, it can be predicted in advance, almost to an 
hour, when the outer lips of the wound can be closed 
and the patient removed. Nothing so precise, noth- 
ing so mathematically exact, has ever been known to 
surgical science. More than a thousand army sur- 
geons were given special two-week courses of training 
in the Carrel-Dakin method at the Rockefeller In- 
stitute before being sent overseas ; thousands of wounds 
that under old methods would have meant death or 
amputation were healed with the least possible re- 
minders remaining to the victims. 

Under the direction of officers of the Medical Corps 
of the army remarkable advances have been made in 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 353 

the use of the X-ray for the detection and exact loca- 
tion of foreign bodies. Not only does the perfected 
X-ray apparatus show by photography the position 
of a bullet or a piece of shell, but by ingenious methods 
the exact depth below the surface is also determined. 
At the same time the Roentgen photograph is being 




PORTABLE FIELD X-RAY EQUIPMENT 

taken a powerful electromagnet is brought over the 
patient's body. The surgeon places his hand as 
nearly as possible over the spot beneath which the piece 
of steel is embedded. When the current is turned on 
the "pull" of the magnet on the embedded steel 
sets up a vibration which the surgeon's hand readily 
detects. The force of this vibration gives the clue 
to the depth of the steel below the surface. To use 
this method requires training and experience and it is 
supplemented by other devices. 



354 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

Formerly the taking of an X-ray photograph was a 
matter of fifteen minutes or more ; the perfected army 
apparatus does the work in a few seconds. More- 
over, there has been devised a portable X-ray appa- 
ratus that can be sent up to the front-line hospitals, 
the generator being mounted in a motor-truck, so 
that wounded men in the last months of the war 
did not have to wait until they could be sent back 
to the base hospitals before their cases could be 
thoroughly diagnosed and frequently the bits of shell 
removed. 

It would be easy to write many pages of description 
of surgical innovations devised and introduced by 
Americans in the war. The surgical work of our men 
in the Medical Corps, both of the regular army and 
of the reserves, was the marvel of the Allies, even as our 
hospitals, their equipment, and their nurses and nurs- 
ing methods far excelled anything previously seen in 
Europe. Among the most valuable of these achieve- 
ments is the discovery by Dr. William Townsend 
Porter, of the Rockefeller Institute, of the cause of 
the formerly fatal condition known as "surgical 
shock, ' ' and of a cure for it ' ' Shock " is a term used 
by surgeons in several different connections. Broadly 
it means mental and physical collapse. ' ' Shell-shock ' ' 
is a nervous condition susceptible of cure. The form 
of shock arising from dread of the knife and the pain 
of an operation is purely mental in its origin and is 
effectually prevented by the discovery by Doctor 
Crile, of Cleveland, of a way of blocking off com- 
munication through the nerves between the seat of 
operation and the brain. But surgical shock is a 
condition following severe injuries, amputations, or 
compound fractures that is distinctly physical and 
not at all mental or nervous in its origin. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 355 

Doctor Porter discovered that surgical shock, which 
is frequently the cause of death after industrial ac- 
cident as well as on the battle-field, is caused by the 
entrance into the blood-vessels of tiny globules of fat, 
either from the fatty layers just below the skin or 




GENERATOR FOR PORTABLE X-RAY EQUIPMENT 



from the marrow of broken bones. These fat globules 
choke the tiny capillaries and keep the blood from 
flowing to the brain and the extremities; meanwhile, 
the heart keeps on pumping, but the blood collects 
in the large veins of the abdomen and the patient 
literally bleeds to death in his own veins. After 
making this discovery, Doctor Porter worked out a 
method of stimulating the action of the lungs so as to 
draw the blood into the chest cavity and by thus 
forcing the circulation keep the victim alive until 
the fat particles could be absorbed. This is accom- 



356 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

plished by forcing the patient to breathe a mixture 
of air and carbon dioxid, administered through a 
cleverly devised apparatus. It is simple, portable, 
and instantly effective. Another triumph for Amer- 
ican surgical science! 

Equally valuable as a permanent contribution to 
surgery is the new "ambrine" anesthetic, the merciful 
invention of Dr. Gordon Edwards. Sprayed on a 
burn or an open wound, it instantly relieves pain; 
with its aid dressings can be changed and wounds 
treated without the slightest sensation on the part 
of the patient. 

The French and Italians have carried farther than 
have American surgeons the plastic surgery that 
literally gives the man who has been wounded in the 
face a new set of features. Some wonderful things 
in this line have been done, however, by Americans. 
A new nose has been made of bone from the patient's 
own shin and flesh and skin from his forearm ; shattered 
jaws have been replaced by silver "bones," so ad- 
justed that there is hardly an outward indication of an 
operation. And in the field of artificial arms and 
legs and their perfect adaptation to the necessities 
of the dismembered American methods have super- 
seded almost all others. Artificial arms and hands 
with which the soldier who has lost both arms can 
write, handle knife and fork, lift a glass of water, 
and perform many other simple operations have been 
fitted; artificial legs and feet that enable their wearer 
even to dance have been brought to perfection by the 
staff of expert surgeons and limb-makers working 
at the Army Medical College and the Walter Reed 
Hospital at Washington. All of these inventions, de- 
vices, and discoveries are that much distinct gain, 
adapted as they are to the needs of a world in which 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 357 

disease and accident will still continue to take toll of 
human life and limb. 

When the United States entered the war the entire 
supply of surgical instruments on hand in the United 
States was adequate for only a fraction of the probable 
need. Surgical instruments had been chiefly made in 
Germany; almost every dealer in surgical instruments 
in America was an agent or a branch of a German 
house. The peace-time supply of some classes of 
instruments had been coming from England for the 
first two years of the war in Europe, but that source 
was shut off by England's own needs. 

One of the most vital and difficult tasks the Surgeon- 
General's office undertook was the establishment in 
America of a surgical-instrument industry. The 
makers of ordinary needles could not make surgical 
needles. By adopting six standard sizes and shapes 
and placing contracts for ten million needles with the 
big sewing-machine companies the army was equipped 
as early as these were needed. Tested at the Bureau 
of Standards, they were found to be superior to the 
best German needles, and America is now independent 
of Germany. Manufacturers of knives were induced 
by big contracts to undertake the manufacture of 
surgical knives. Here, too, the German product 
was improved upon. For artery forceps recourse was 
had to the manufacturers of scissors; now we make 
all we need in America. So with many other kinds 
of surgical appliances and instruments, until America 
in every respect became independent, now and for all 
time, of Germany or any other country. 

No survey of the work of the Army Medical Corps 
would be complete without at least a reference to 
that triumph of Yankee ingenuity, the mental analysis 
of three million soldiers and their classification by 

24 



YFIDENTIAL. 



Espionage Act of June 15, 1 



both. 
GROUP NO _ 



FORM 8 GROUP EXAMINATION ALPHA 

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Occupation ■. _ - — Weekly Wages 



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12. 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 



FIRST PAGE OF THE "ALPHA TEST 

It looks like a game, but it records human intelligence unerringly when 
properly applied. 



Form No. CCP-I-1000M-9-17 

QUALIFICATION 



RECORD 



To be sent at once to the Division Personnel Officer 



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360 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

scientific psychological methods that rated their rela- 
tive intelligence fairly and accurately and made it 
possible to pick out and place where they could render 
most effective service the men who were capable of 
leadership, those who could be made into officers, 

those best adapted for 
the work of each of the 
other arms of the ser- 
vice, and those of low 
mental caliber who 
were fit only for the 
Service of Supply or 
for work around the 
home camps. 

Washington looked 
forward to not less 
than three more years 
of war on that April 
day in 191 7 when the 
President and Congress finally agreed that the patience 
of the American people had been stretched to the 
breaking-point. If we were to win the war in that 
time, we must find a quicker way than the army 
knew, than the civilian world knew, of fitting the 
square pegs into the square holes, and finding a 
round peg for every round hole, or our army of two 
or three or five or ten million men would be nothing 
but a mob of two or three or five or ten million 
men. It would not be an army at all, and it would 
not win the war. 

We won the war in eighteen months — half the time 
that we expected to take. And among all the con- 
tributing causes that enabled us to train nearly 
four million average Americans into soldiers, provide 
them with sufficiently competent officers, and send 



PART OF THE BETA TEST 

Illiterates demonstrate their mental power by 
tracing through mazes like this. 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 361 

more than half of them overseas, there is none that 
more strikingly illustrates Yankee resourcefulness and 
ingenuity in the application of science to practical 
every-day affairs than the methods devised and ap- 
plied by American psychologists for a determination 
of the mental qualifications and the special abilities of 
officers and men alike. 

Test_6 





114 1VM* 78 St., 



PART OF THE BETA TEST IS TO TELL WHAT IS WRONG WITH PICTURES 
LIKE THESE 



"Psychology" is a word used so loosely in ordinary 
conversation and that has been so misused for purposes 
of commercial exploitation by individuals who have no 
possible claim to be regarded as scientists that the 
offer of the American Psychological Association to 
co-operate with the War Department and the army 
General Staff was received with considerable skepticism 
as to any possible usefulness. So completely did the 
application of psychological science justify itself that 
it is a safe assertion to say that no officer or enlisted 
man will ever again be taken into either the army or 
the navy of the United States except on the basis of 
his fitness as disclosed by the methods devised and 



362 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

applied in the Great War, and that the rating, classi- 
fication, and detail of the army personnel will always 
in a large measure be governed by these or similar 

tests applied to 
each individual 
soldier. That as 
a result of this 
complete and suc- 
cessful demon- 
stration of the 
practical utility of 
applied psychol- 
ogy government 
civilian employees 
before long may 
be rated and 
classified in the 
same fashion is 
not improbable. 

Under the direc- 
tion of Dr. Robert 
M. Yerkes, presi- 
dent of the Ameri- 
can Psychological 
Association, who 
was commissioned 
a Major in the 
Medical Corps, 
there was brought 
into the service a staff of trained psychologists who 
devised and applied a simple, efficient series of mental 
tests, the results of which were amazing, even to the 
psychologists themselves, in the accuracy and speed 
with which the intelligence of the men examined by 
this means was ascertained. 




TEST FOR RADIATOR REPAIR-MAN 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 363 



The practical application of the psychological tests 
covered a very wide range indeed. The highest 
intelligence among enlisted men is required in the 

.field artillery, 

machine-gun bat- 
talions, and Signal 
Corps. Men of 
the lowest grade 
of intelligence 
may serve ade - 
quately as labor- 
ers, teamsters, 
and other non- 
combatant ser- 
vice, while men 
below the average 
can perform 
duties of an infan- 
tryman satisf ac - 
torily. 

By the applica- 
tion of the mental 
tests it was found 
possible to brin ; 
up the average o: 
particular com- 
panies, regiments, 
and detachments 
by exchanging 
men of high men- 
tality from one 

regiment for an equal number of men of the lower 
grades from another regiment in which the average 
of mental ability was low. It obviously was an im- 
mense saving of time and energy to be able to de- 




SHEET-METAL WORKER DEMONSTRATING SKILL 

ON SIMPLE WORK IN HIS TRADE BY MAKING A 

TIN CUP 



364 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

termine that a particular soldier, on the strength of 
his psychological score, was qualified to be turned 
into a good artilleryman, machine-gunner, Signal 
Corps man, or what not; by preventing the loading 
up of a competent division with men who could 
qualify only for the service of supply, the work of 
the psychologists saved incalculable delay in getting 
our overseas contingent ready to fight. 

And while one group of psychologists, working 
under the direction of the Surgeon-General's office, 
was classifying the army personnel as to the mental 
capacity of its units, the Personnel Branch of the 
Operations Division of the General Staff was under- 
taking the task of determining the special technical 
and vocational ability of every one of the millions 
of men drawn into the army through the medium of the 
selective draft, and placing each of them where he 
could contribute most to the strength of the nation's 
military force. 

These trade tests were as carefully devised and 
worked out by scientifically trainedp sychologists as 
were the mental tests which I have already described. 
For example, who can tell offhand what a first-class 
plumber ought to know? Half a dozen plumbers 
may have half a dozen opinions. Their employers 
may regard certain knowledge as essential which the 
men themselves do not so regard. In Newark the 
practice may be for plumbers to do certain things 
which are not done in Cleveland or in St. Louis; so 
for every trade and occupation listed in this huge 
dictionary of occupations exact information as to what 
sort of questions should be asked of men professing to 
know each trade was obtained from employers, from 
officials of labor unions, from recognized skilled 
workers actually at the trade, in five different cities, 




A GROUP OF CANDIDATES FOR COMMISSIONS TAKING THE ALPHA TEST 




THE "BINET" TEST FOR THE MEN OF LOWEST MENTAL CALIBER 




AUTO-DRIVER TEST COURSE 

The stakes are knocked down by the poor driver and that counts against his total 
score in the test. 







RUNNING THROUGH AN ARTIFICIAL SAND-PIT AS PART OF THE MOTOR 
CYCLE TEST 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 367 

covering every part of the country in which the 
particular trade is extensively practised. 

From the consensus of information thus obtained 
there was devised for every trade in the occupational 
index a list of questions and their proper answers. In 
many cases the questions were supplemented by 
pictures of tools, apparatus, or processes. A man 
who professed to be a blacksmith was asked questions 
the answers to which revealed at once his familiarity, 
or lack of it, with the blacksmithing art; he was 
shown pictures of tools used by blacksmiths, and if 
he could not name them properly his claim to being a 
blacksmith vanished. If, however, he passed this 
first oral test, then he was immediately given an op- 
portunity with anvil, forge, and sledge to demon- 
strate his manual skill in applying the knowledge 
which his answers had indicated. These men were 
classified, not only as blacksmiths, but as experts, 
journeymen, or apprentices. 

This system of trade tests was under installation in 
all training and receiving camps and cantonments at 
the signing of the armistice. It was in full operation 
in only a few of the camps, although the first pre- 
liminary classification was complete for the entire 
army personnel. So 'there was at every camp or 
division headquarters a card index, one card for every 
man in the division or camp, so classified by means 
of punch marks and marginal numbers and different 
colored metal tags that a telegram from Washington 
to each division headquarters would bring back at 
once a precise census of the number of qualified cob- 
blers, mule-drivers, or what not available in the 
entire army. It was then a simple matter to send 
the necessary men from one camp to another and 
instantly meet the need of the moment. 




MANY GROWN MEN WERE FOUND WITHOUT ENOUGH INTELLIGENCE 
TO PUT THE ARMS AND LEGS ON A WOODEN DOLL 




MAKING THE TRADE TESTS 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 369 

As I have taken pains to point out, the importance 
of this successful demonstration on a huge scale of 
applied psychology in the selection, rating, and place- 
ment of men doesn't end with the ending of the war. 
The work done in the army has pointed the way for 
the determination in civil affairs of the relative value 
of men in every walk of life, from those requiring the 
highest intellectual activity to those occupations in 
which the sole requirement is physical stamina. It 
has pointed the way, too, for the standardization of 
occupational requirements so that the employer of 
artisans of any sort can determine, without the 
ruinous waste of time and materials that has always 
been necessary to pick out the skilled workman from 
the mass of incompetents, whether a particular man 
is qualified for a particular job without having to 
hire him first in order to find out. 

Nobody in or out of the army would claim that the 
system or any part of it has achieved ultimate per- 
fection ; as a long step in the direction of the solution 
of such economic problems as can be solved by keep- 
ing the square pegs out of the round holes, the war 
work of American psychologists is a distinct and valu- 
able contribution to the peaceful progress of the 
world. 



XX 



CONCLUSION 



THE old adage, "Necessity is the mother of inven- 
tion," is literally true. Human progress in the 
arts and sciences has from the beginning of time been 
dictated by humanity's economic necessities. The 
most marvelous invention ever made is of no value 
unless, in some way, it ministers to a social need. 
But given the need, the invention will surely be made. 

The record of Yankee ingenuity in the war, of which 
I have in this book touched only the high spots, is 
a perfect demonstration, on the largest scale in all 
history, of this economic truth. Our needs were great 
and imperative, but they had only to be expressed 
to be filled. Should another similar crisis occur in 
our national career, who can doubt that even more and 
greater marvels would result from the application of 
our traditional resourcefulness and skill in applied 
science ? 

What was true in war is equally true in peace. Our 
scientists and inventors who gave the lie to the croak- 
ers who said "It can't be done" stand ready to repeat 
the performance whenever the pressure of social ne- 
cessity requires it. All the stimulus that is needed is 
the existence of a need and the general recognition 
of its existence. 

Invention moves no faster than demand. It may 
be and often is the case that the inventor is the first 



YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 371 

to recognize the need which his particular applica- 
tion is designed to fill; that society did not realize 
that it wanted his invention until he had offered it 
to them. The world is full of disappointed inventors, 
men and women who have fancied a social need that 
did not exist, or that had not yet become recognized 
as such by society. The great inventions that have 
benefited mankind are those which have most com- 
pletely satisfied wide-spread social needs that existed 
at the time of their introduction. And, as I have said, 
no recognized need ever waits long for the means to 
satisfy it. 

Compared with the ceaseless struggle between man- 
kind and the forces of Nature, the Great War itself 
was but a trifling bit of by-play in the stupendous 
drama that has the whole earth for its stage and on 
which the curtain may be said to have hardly risen 
as yet. We have only begun to find ways of harnessing 
the lightning and the floods, of turning to the use of 
humanity the hidden energies the keys to whose 
hiding-places we are only just beginning to discover. 

From a flat plane of two dimensions the stage of 
this human drama has suddenly become a three- 
dimensioned space, within which man moves as freely 
in all directions as the very air itself. The imagina- 
tion hesitates before the picture of a conquered sphere, 
every square mile of which contributes its share to 
the satisfaction of new and as yet undreamed-of 
human needs; yet the exhibition in the war of human 
resourcefulness and of power already acquired over 
the forces that shall one day make this earth of ours 
all that the prophets of the millennium have pictured 
compels the belief that the pressure of our common 
need will one day see this achieved. Our children's 
children may yet see to the conquest of space added 



372 YANKEE INGENUITY IN THE WAR 

the annihilation of time and an approach to that 
fourth-dimensional state that is as yet but a figment of 
the mathematician's fancy, that state in which the 
words of promise shall be fulfilled, "There is nothing 
hidden that shall not be revealed." 

We who are alive to-day are spectators for whom 
the curtain has not yet fallen on the first act. The 
actors are the men of science who are giving them- 
selves to the service of humanity and the millions of 
young men, inured to hardship by war, fired with the 
spirit of adventure, who are even now, as this is 
written, advancing over earth, sea, and air toward 
every remote and unconquered region of the world, 
to set up new outposts of civilization and bring their 
forests, their rivers, their mines, and their fertile 
fields into the service of mankind. 

They come from every country, of every race, 
these young veterans of the Great War — French and 
German, English and Austrian, American and Bul- 
garian, Japanese and Turk, Australian and Russian. 
From the headwaters of the Amazon to the steppes of 
Tartary, in steaming African jungle and in the ice- 
bound Yukon you shall find them, side by side, work- 
ing out the destiny of their children and ours in the 
great world-drama. 

And in this war of man with nature, as in the war 
of nations, who can doubt that no small share of the 
victory will be due to Yankee ingenuity? 



f](? 



THE END 



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